Violet Era: Weapons Free
by Therix
Summary: The War with Robotnik is not the only battle that the freedom fighters find themselves embroiled in. Sonic and Sally's marriage is on the rocks even as King Maximillian moves to consider succession, and a few political enemies are not the only ones to worry about... First arc in the Violet Era series.
1. Prelude to Conflict i

Honour. Honour and right, that's what his Kingdom was founded on. Honour claimed by his right to the throne, and Right because it was his place to rule. His time on the throne was running out, but without a suitable monarch to replace him, it looked to be the end of the kingdom. Sally had no grasp of politics, and she spent too much time running that little rebellion of hers, which he only tolerated because it reminded Robotnik how easy it was to take him down. Then her choice of mates! Sonic, that hyperactive unreasonable hedgehog, who knew even less of politics and was possibly the worst choice for the kingdom.

There was Elias, his eldest son, and a far more suitable choice, but he was an introvert when it came to the kingdom and his ministers, and he didn't contribute enough. He had attempted, and failed, to encourage him to join in the debates, but he resisted, for a reason he could not fathom. For some reason, he wanted to spend more time with his family than running the kingdom! Max understood the feeling, but he had always suppressed his personal desires for those of the kingdom.

He had made sacrifices to ensure his kingdom lived on, emotionally and strategically. He would make sure that his kingdom would not fade into the backwaters of history, even if that meant forsaking his offspring and adopting a new prince to become the king. If he could not leave his realm in the hands of his son or daughter, he would find a new one, one more fitting to the role.

Speaking of which…he had a meeting to attend to, the G.U.N Protectorate was once again trying to expand into his borders, and he once again had to remind them where the line lay, both to his country and to his leniency.

Beside a small window on a well-crafted chair in his quarters he sat, in silent contemplation of the next move he would make. His hand moved finally from the armrest and shifted a rook two places to the left.

His opponent sat in the chair opposite him, Geoffrey St. John, a skunk and the king's closest advisor, frowned at the move in confusion. He always lost at this game, despite being logical as his king dictated, but he believed beating him at this simple game gave the King some simple pleasure, and reminded St. John of who was truly in charge. His strategy in chess, just as in life, was a mystery to Geoffrey, only becoming clear in times where the skunk offered assistance. He shifted his king away from the source of the danger, a pincer movement the king had set up, and rested back in the comfortable chair slightly. As much as he detested the game, he felt it kept his mind sharp and these moments of solitude offered him some reprieve, and a chance to observe the king's nuances.

"Strange move, you are fond of that little shifting of the power balance." He heard the king say, the old man not looking up from the board. King Maximilian Acorn was old, definitely, but he was maddeningly robust and healthy. In his prime he had been a dangerous sword master, and though his reflexes had dulled a little with age, he was still the match and more of many in the kingdom, apart from that damned Antoine, who could come extremely close, and Elias, but the boy was receiving his training from the king – he was his son, after all, and though he would grow to equal him, he would never be his better.

"Something wrong, Geoffrey?" the king asked, eyes flashing up to fix on the skunk for a moment.

"No, no, your highness, but your statement briefly reminded me of your swordsmanship." He leaned forward again and took the rook with a pawn, adding to the small gathering of taken pieces. They were late into the game, and Geoff had accumulated a few fallen pieces, but so had the king, and as aforementioned, Geoffrey never won.

"That is why I hired you." The king told him, the gruff, solemn voice speaking from the board, "you think differently to me. Your ways differ from my own, and the best viewpoint is often a fresh one." His bishop danced through the gap left by the pawn. "Sometimes your thinking is flawed…" he paused as the king piece snatched the bishop from the table, "…other times, it is exactly what you need." He moved his queen in a final move across the board, taking the pawn and checkmating the king.

Geoffrey conceded and sat back, the king doing likewise. "Do you know why I like these games?" he asked his aide. It made the skunk a little nervous; it wasn't the sort of question he asked. He remained silent, assuming it was rhetorical.

"No, it isn't a joke, why do you think?"

When Geoffrey answered, his voice had a light quiver in it that he could not suppress. I, well- I assumed it was because you enjoyed the victory."

"A fair assumption, yes." It drew a faint smile from the old monarch, "but no. It is because I enjoy the certainty, the logic of it. Imagine if every battle was fought this way, soldiers filled with unswerving loyalty, willing to follow your orders to the letter, even if for no gain or to march to their deaths. A pawn, the most unlikely pieces in a game, can carry the match, provided you use it correctly, as you will recall."

Geoffrey did, he had lost a few times to an interesting checkmate involving a few pawns.

"But often it will be used as a commodity, something expendable." The king continued, "lost in the first few moves of the game. Think of a soldier that gave you such devotion you could do just that."

"Perhaps if that were the case in all things, you would have no need of my council." Geoffrey ventured.

"Indeed, though I think I would have employed you anyway, it gets awfully boring up here on a slow day, and Alicia finds chess dreadfully dull." There was a hint of resentment in the king's tone.

"It is indeed not a game for everyone." Geoffrey reassured him, "I have found women have different interests to their husbands, no matter who they are."

"Well, we are not here to discuss the avocations my dear wife indulges herself in, but I thank you for your words. Now, we have a mission of diplomacy with the G.U.N Protectorate, do we not? We shouldn't keep them waiting. You are dismissed, Geoffrey. Dress accordingly and go to the throne room in half an hour, and tell the Protectorate I will be along shortly."

Geoffrey rose from his seat bowed subserviently to the king, before wheeling and marching from the chamber. As ordered he washed, changed clothes and smartened himself up some for the audience, but he still had a few minutes to waste and so instead of taking the direct route through the palace, he made a short detour to his quarters, and once he was sure the door was shut, he flipped out a small data-phone from his pocket and held it to his ear.

"How are the supply lines?"

"We are having problems creating a route to circumnavigate patrols, and we had to put down another one for defection."

"Keep trying, there has to be a route, I know it."

He flipped the phone shut, not waiting for a reply. They could deal with those issues, he had a king to watch, for a little longer, at least. The king knew about it, at least, he knew there were things that went on behind his back, things Geoffrey didn't tell him, but he had assumed for some time that they were merely mundane matters, ones that he didn't need to trouble himself with. Things were deeper than he imagined, but it was a myth that he did not want to dispel.

* * *

"You're doing it again!"

"What?"

"You're not listening to anything, not taking it seriously!"

"Because you're taking too long on things!"

"This happens with you every time Sonic, you're always convinced that you can sprint in, beat the bad guy and sprint out again with nothing bad coming of your actions!"

"Well it works!"

"Not all the time, and the last time it went wrong you almost got all of us killed, and we only escaped in the end because Knuckles used his hyper form to shatter part of angel island!"

"Tone it down, both of you." Tails interposed himself between the arguing pair, pushing Sonic and Sally away from each other with his namesakes, light bursting from his fingertips. "Keep the domestics at home, not when you're trying to brief us on this next strike. In fact, if this is going to keep going for the entire mission, I'm splitting you two."

"You-"

"You don't-" they both objected.

"Yes, I do, I can, and I will. Sonic, you will go with me, Amy, Telera, and Lupin. Sally, you will go with Fiona, Retis, and you have Nicole with you too, and don't object, I'm not putting it up for debate. These petty arguments are going on enough already without you starting fights between each other when you should be fighting Robotnik."

"Tails, we should move now; I don't think this is going to progress any further." Lupin growled in his assent, and Telera raised one hand silently, adding her agreement. Lupin, a grey wolf with a head for hunting, was often the referee in these scuffles, his unbreakable mind-set an almost physical barrier.

Telera was peculiar – at least, peculiar to the freedom fighters. At nineteen, the tigress was unnaturally tall for Mobian, just over five feet, though she had been inducted into the 'fighters through merit of speed and balance in combat. She had suffered severe mental trauma under Robotnik's study during her first mission, and the damage had left her teetering on the edge of madness. Nicole had reprogrammed her neural pathways and saved her from this madness, though she was still mute, though it had only seemed to increase her focus. She was expected to be a survivor. Lupin had been trying to chat her up for some time, an unusual pairing she had at first shown an interest in, but she remained aloof, silence being a form of blessing to her.

Tails nodded in agreement. "Come on Sonic, let's go, get ready. Sally, you prep your team."

It was almost as if she were about to rebuke him for the interruption, instead she nodded with a quick smile and left with Retis and Fiona following.

"Thanks for the save, man." Sonic muttered in Tail's ear.

"I wasn't saving you, I was shutting you both up. We don't have time for arguing, and to be perfectly honest, I'm in agreement with Sally at this point. Sonic, I know you like to live like the wind, as you always said, but try and think what's happening to the rest of us when we go in."

"You're starting to sound like her."

"No, I'm not taking it as far as that. I'm not trying to change you, I don't mind your lack of planning, just as long as for a few minutes you sit down beforehand and work out what happens if you go wrong, and maybe think of going at it a different way. Four yearsago you did this alone, four years ago – not now. Now it's time to start looking before you leap."

"Awwww…" Sonic began to moan, then Tails punched him in the shoulder. Not aggressively, but enough to get his attention.

"I'm being serious." Was all he said, before leaving Sonic to talk to Amy, Lupin and Telera.

"You coming?" Tails called back to the sulking hedgehog, "We have to get there within the hour."

"Yea, whatever." Sonic spun on his heel and trailed after them, trying to mull it over in his head.

Had Tails just told him off?

* * *

Sally cradled the modified Mercy II combat pistol, the only weapon she felt comfortable using these days, aside from her own body, which was a finely tuned weapon in itself. Pressing herself against the tree, feeling the bark against her skin, she stared out at the newest combot factory Robotnik had unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the Acorn forest. Several patrols were already patrolling the perimeter, whilst spider-legged construction drones erected electro-barriers and automated turrets.

Glancing behind her she checked the rest of the team. A pair of Nicole-drones crouched with her, the AI using heavily modified Onslaught robots, sized down and with a different weapon load-out, mobilised to make up the numbers and provide Sally's group with technical support. Above, Fiona found her position in the trees, methodically checking every inch of her sniper-variant Judgement rifle before scanning the base with it.

"More guards that you expected, Sugar-queen, you still think we can do this?"

Sally shuddered at the use of her nickname, but replied, "We can do it, I trust Tails." She carefully avoided using Sonic's name, her own silent retribution against him. Fiona picked up on it.

"You can stop hiding it, sugar-queen. You and blue-boy are going to be married before the year is out, the way you two are already arguing, just like a married couple."

Sally began to form a reply as Retis tapped her on the shoulder. The Echidna was clumsy, courtesy of his gloves, but the medieval black armour he wore hid his bright vermilion skin and he eschewed weapons, functioning as the party's heavy-hitter. It was his job to go in when things started exploding, then not coming out again until he made sure everything had done so.

"I'm getting the heads-up from Lupin that the others are in position."

"Alright then. Fiona, you have lead."

"Got it lovebird." The vulpine whispered through the comm-link as she watched the Judgement run through a quick half-second check that all systems were working. The weapon had to test itself before each clip fired, to ensure that the energy clip didn't explode when loading. She sighted one of the teams, and flipped the round-counter over to SED, and sent out a single shot. Each SED round used ten charges, but was just as powerful. She watched the round streak away, punching through the armoured carapace of the lead combot, then detonating in a spectacular firework display, showering the rest of the patrol unit with smaller, but just as dangerous, energy-shrapnel.

Six of the remaining nine went down as the singing blue bolts cut through CPUs, optics, and ammunition stores. A seventh listed sideways into the mud as a piece bit into the leg piston and another jettisoned its arm as sensors detected leaking fuel line. It left only one fully combat capable in the squad, one immobilised and the other only at half-combat capacity. Two nearby patrol squads responded to the threat, raising weapons, switching to combat optics and activating weapon feeds, while a construction spider redirected to repair the damaged squad.

Below, the two Nicole-Class Onslaught attack robots surged forward, Lacerator skates alighting with blue light, bolt cannons connecting internal weapon feeds as they close on the squads. Fire began to whip their way, scoring gouges in the ground as the heavy-bore arm-cannons sought a mark, and each shot was evaded with lethal grace only achievable by Nicole in control. Still moving, one Onslaught raised a single cannon and spun out a lone shot, the fuel dump igniting and sending the self-propelled round into the torso-chamber of the nearest combot, detonating within and forcing it apart. The second arm rose, punching off a stream of rounds towards the beleaguered half-squad and construction spider, smashing through the delicate outer casing. Nicole calculated firing lines on the move, realigning trajectories and distances in microseconds, though she was not infallible. Shots went astray as the combot squads began to coordinate properly, then Sally and Retis joined the fight proper.

Retis showed himself first, breaking the cover of the tree line at a sprint, curving towards a combot group, further away and moving to engage. Sally followed him, leaving the Onslaught robots to cope with the first two squads and Fiona to deal with overwatch.

Mercy bucked in Sally's hands, cracking off ES shots as she moved towards the squad, more cautiously than Retis, but hoping to gain ground anyway.

* * *

Across the compound, some distance from the fighting, the second group waited. Lupin with a pair of gauntlet-mounted arm sabres, each one running back along the outside of his arm up to the elbow. Along with his dark cloak, he wore no armour, just the standard military-grade boots.

Telera had taken a little more time with her out-load, and she had fitted a pair of blade-gauntlets, each one housing a foot-length blade that shot out through use of a neural command. At her belt was her own, standard issue Mercy II, and she wore a black body-glove and a steel chestplate.

Amy still wore her standard red dress, despite Tails having deemed it 'unsuitable for combat.'

Sonic was fidgety – it wasn't like him to wait with any sort of patience, it was in his blood to run, but he couldn't help noticing Amy and Tails. She had asked Tails out a few months ago, and to his knowledge he had said yes, and they seemed to be doing so well. The arguments they had barely lasted a few moments, less of the hour-long shouting matches he and Sally were wont to engage in. Damn…how did Amy, the obsessed, screaming little teenager he had known not all that long ago, ended up with Tails, in a relationship that seemed at the least content. It was that thought, as much as anything else, that made him restless.

"Smells like Sally and the others have got their attention Tails." Lupin growled to the fox, who seemed to be the self-appointed leader of the team.  
"Alright, Sonic, do what you do best." That was most definitely his cue.

From his lean against the tree he was moving, cooling systems in his shoes pumping away the heat as he accelerated beyond 100mph in a matter of moments, angling towards the electric fence. The gap between him and the obstacle narrowed rapidly, and he jumped, chaos-enhanced musculature carrying him up and over the low-tech defensive line. The moment he was over he stopped, scraping a line in the grass as he arrested momentum, and turned to look at the buzzing electric wall. It looked just as it did from the outside, bar a few narrow pillars, too think to even think about spin-dashing without being fried on the purple electricity. He had to get the others in, or he would just be confirming that he was impetuous, arrogant, all the things he was trying to deny.

He began to pace, more comfortable with his thoughts when moving, racking his brains for some way through.

"Tails, you reckon you can disable the shield? Looks like my field of expertise isn't going that far over here. I can't touch it without being barbecued, you think you could pull a trick with ring bombs?" he finally gave up, at least Tails might have something to get the other three through.

"There's no external generators this side…I'm going to toss some fusion rings over, just catch them and lob them at a few of the generators, will you?" came the reply through the comm.

For the next five minutes, that's exactly what they did. It took Tails longer to programme fusion rings that other types, and then he had to hope Sonic would be there in time before they hit the ground.

The clincher was that if Sonic failed to catch one when it hit the ground, and he was standing near it…it didn't bear thinking about.

And so they all breathed a sigh of relief as the energy field, overtaxed by the sudden loss of four of the pylons, collapsed like fallen curtain. Sonic waited on the other side, quite un-vaporised, watching the curtain of electricity sweep away, before casting another look at Tails.

"You really have to teach me how to make those one day."

"They certainly work."

"I mean the fireworks they give off!"

"Oh. If that's the case…then no. I'm not having you setting those off in Knothole – everyone will think there's a war on."

It took Sonic a few moments to get the irony of the case, and eventually he let out a chuckle, but it didn't last long, as it died away and the five turned to look at the grim, metallic shell of the factory exterior.

"Shouldn't it be, you know, bigger?" Amy asked to no-one in particular. It was Tails who answered, with an explanation possible slightly too long for a battlefield.

"Robotnik doesn't need them to be big – they're little more than automated production lines, nothing really inside to use except a few service hatchways to access key points if maintenance really is necessary. No workers or workstations, so very little needed to make a working factory. We should be able to cripple it from out here."

Amy, who should have been bemused by this lengthy explanation, just clung to him instead, and over his shoulder he could tell that she was ogling Sonic again. He knew what she was doing – the old go out with his best friend to make him jealous thing – he had heard it before. He went along with it as his way of helping out Sonic and Sally.

And besides, Amy wasn't all that bad looking…four years had seen her….develop. She was smarter than she had been back then, and more level headed in all matters that didn't concern Sonic.

"Alright then…" Tails began, Amy releasing him as if on cue, watching him summon half-a-dozen ring-bombs into orbit around his hands, "let's make some noise."

Guided by a series of magnetic field generators built into the palms of his gloves, the rings sailed forward into a line, detonating in a string of blasts against a localised area. When the dirt and shrapnel had stopped flying, the group looked up again to admire his handiwork – a few metres of metal had been excised from the wall, creating a sizeable looking hole taken up by bent and crushed pipework.

"Amy, your turn."

"Ok dear." She told Tails, taking the damage at a run, hammer held back in preparation for striking.

It should be noted that Amy's hammer was wrongly-classified when Robotnik first got his hands on it. Initial readings confirmed that the hammer was hollow and made of steel, painted to avoid rusting. After retrieval, Tails had examined it in more detail and found that it was in fact made of a fusion of Megatal and aluminium, resulting in a weapon that was both near-indestructible and light enough for one such as Amy to carry with little effort. The interior had in fact been hollow, and it was there that Tails had stored the EMP charge, a tracking device, and a loyalty drive that pulled the hammer back to Amy, provided she was close enough.

She closed the gap and swung with all her (minimal) strength, triggering the EMP device as she did so. As the hammer connected with the cracked and damaged piping, it hammered through it as a ripple from the EMP spread out and a ring of detonations silhouetted the hedgehog girl as processors and turrets cooked out and exploded.

Tails caught Sonic glaring at him. "What?" he asked.

"Just making sure you remember it was _**you**_ who modified that hammer."

* * *

**A/N: This is the beginning of the Violet Era series, a set of story arcs which are going to be a full continuity in their own right.**


	2. Prelude to Conflict ii

"Am I the only one who doesn't feels relieved when everything goes according to plan?" Sally asked the group as they trailed back to Knothole. Sonic had sprinted ahead with Nicole(s), leaving the normal and Tails to their own devices.

_"It's always a welcome feeling."_ Telera signed to the squirrel. _"Are you worried about it?"_

"Yes, to be frank. Every time we destroy another factory, Robotnik has some master plan to kidnap one of us or steal an emerald or something. When things go off without a hitch, it feels like we're missing something."

"We did." All heads turned to Lupin. "Robotnik was there, not long before we arrived. I could smell him, and that begs the question…why this one? Why would he inspect this one personally? Tails, if you have the answer, I think I will be surprised for the first time in my life."

The fox did. "He never inspects the others…we never saw what this was going to produce. We saw the guards, regular combots, and assumed it was producing defensive units already, but we never saw it actively producing anything. Perhaps it was giving off a new variety, something special, and Robotnik wanted to ensure it was working correctly?"

"I saw quite a few lines building processors, looked advanced, plenty of data cores and targeting arrays. Whatever he was building in there was going to be smart, very smart." Retis elaborated.  
"There's your answer Lupin." Tails finished with only a little smirk.

"You know what? I'm not surprised." The wolf answered finally. "I should be used to you having all the answers by now, even though I am your elder by a good ten years."

Tails decided to ignore the comment, instead triggering a neural command that activated a holographic scouter from his earpiece, the blue optic flickering up around his left eye. The left half began to display a column of data from the battle, the top right displaying a small radar. Telera did the same, and saw what he was searching for. She jumped sideways into the undergrowth, and there was a snarl and metallic scrape before she emerged again, carrying what looked like a plate with legs.

_"He's getting smart, covered it with morganite to mess up the chaos-sense."_

"It wasn't what they were producing at the factory. Too basic, it's just a scout drone. That…"

Tails took the drone, splintering it with one of his namesakes, "…that was just the doctor's futile attempt to get us to take him to Knothole."

* * *

"Remind us exactly what you are asking."

"A technology exchange – MilesCorp weaponry for our tank squadrons."

"You're being vague once again. I take my time to meet with you, I allow you into my kingdom to begin with, the least you owe me is an explanation. What MilesCorp technology for what armour?" the king was already losing his patience. Surely the Protectorate ambassadors should be thankful that they were even granted an audience?

"We want your Energy assault rifle, and in return, we offer the Armoured Command Unit."

Max weighed up the choice. The assault rifle for the gun-toting trucks he had heard caused so much trouble for Robotnik's forces.

"That's not the king's choice to make." They all turned to see the newcomer as he closed the door, crossed the room and dropped into an empty seat. "As both owner and proprietor of all MilesCorp holdings, I think that decision lies with me." Tails explained, giving the king a hard look.  
Feelings of anger and hate rose in Max's breath, but he forced them down in an attempt to stay civil in front of the overlanders. He didn't particularly like Tails – he seemed to think he was above the king and his laws. Unfortunately, to an extent, he was. He controlled MilesCorp, as he rightly claimed, and thus any bionic enhancements or weaponry or tanks the military was equipped with. He was on friendly terms with Antoine D'Coolette, the ranking military general, and the general's girlfriend, Bunnie Rabbot. Then he was also on good terms with Sally. All added up, he had a good hand over the king – and he could beat him at chess, an aspect that the king sorely despised.

So he forced a smile. "Yes, my apologies, Mr Prower, but it would have been unkind of me in my position of host to keep our esteemed friends waiting, would it not?"

"Yes, it would have been unkind, but so would have selling them my technology without informing me of the move. I am denying the request. If you want an ACU, I can build it. You can put the suggestion forward to me without resorting to trade-offs." The seat swivelled so Tails was facing the G.U.N ambassadors. "I am Miles Prower, owner of MilesCorp. I suggest next time you want my technology, you make sure I am present when negotiations begin. I have no qualms about you asking for technology, demanding it if you so dare, but taking it without my permission. That is theft, and I don't take kindly to theft."

The ambassador smiled over at the king. "perhaps we should conclude for now. We do not seem to be making any progress today." Then to Tails, "You have my apologies, Mr Prower, for any offence caused. I hope this will not affect further negotiations?" He expected and answer, and so was taken aback by the dismissive wave he received, before he stood, collected his papers and data slates, then marched from the room, bodyguards in tow.

"Need I remind you of your place?" the king snapped at Tails once they were alone, aside from Geoffrey of course.

"You do not own MilesCorp, Max, nor are the holdings in control of the government. You have no authority whatsoever over my company, so it is not _your_ place to give and take its technology. MilesCorp is sited in Knothole, which is under official jurisdiction of N.I.C.O.L.E sentient AI construct, as I'm sure you don't need reminding. She alone has power akin to mine in the MilesCorp trade quarter. Sally told me that you were holding this trade-off, so I made sure my own interests were secure."

"My interests were in the defence of the kingdom!" Max almost shouted.

"By giving them our most powerful infantry-held weapon? The Judgement is capable of punching through even the heaviest armour, and you defend us by giving it away? A single soldier with a half-decent aim and a Judgement Sniper-variant could annihilate an ACU G.U.N truck with no support necessary. If you are so worried about having that technology, it can be built with relative ease, but even then I would not. The G.U.N truck is a front line weapon, and we do not fight war to draw attention to ourselves. A twenty-six wheeler driving through the forest would certainly do that. In fact, it would leave a path straight through the terrain to its source. Do you really want the entire Armoured Legion marching down a corridor you created?"

Max couldn't counter that. The boy was already a sound tactician, at sixteen years old. He had just condemned the entire plan, the entire trade, to uselessness. Once again he had that pervasive sense of helplessness that he always got when talking to Tails, and he still hadn't gotten used to it. It was like fighting an invisible wall – you never saw it coming and even when you found it you still couldn't break through.

"No, but Mobotropolis is built to withstand invasion…" the king began, to be once again cut off.

"But Knothole isn't. There are countless settlements in these forests, Maximilian, any of them are put at risk by creating a passageway for marching forces. Not all of them have the stealth technology that I have implemented around Knothole, and most of them are thus prime targets for Robotnik. If you had acceded to that request, I expect this kingdom would rapidly have become a democracy, don't you?"

Geoffrey, this time, answered the taunt. "It's not your place to question his authority, _Mr_ Prower, not to make threats to-"

"And neither is it your place to speak when I am so clearly having a conversation with your better, so shut your mouth, John. As to your statement, I am not questioning his authority. MilesCorp is my company, out of bounds to anyone but myself and Nicole. I have violated no bounds of authority, and so cannot be charged in such a way. King Max, if you would dismiss your lapdog, we will discuss the intricacies in private."

"My king, I-"the skunk spluttered.

"Leave, Geoffrey, now." The king's tone brokered no argument, and he was forced to relinquish his stance and excuse himself from the room. Fuming with rage, he stormed back to his quarters, ignoring the questions of the guards. He could think of nothing better to do that to wring the life from that damn fox…but something made him pause outside his room, made him stare at the ornate framework of the doorway. He ran one hand down the dark woodwork, the delicate curling design that patterned the door. He had never really noticed it before. He could find no reason for the pause, nothing was out of place, there was no unsettling news…except…he pushed open the door. A faint breeze brushed his fur from the open window as he stepped in and closed the door behind him, locking it. Then he turned, moved to a side-table, and poured himself a goblet of wine from a decanter.

"Would you like a drink, Khepri?"

"No thank you, I'm not staying long." The spider stepped out from concealment, deactivating the refractor stealth field he held on his person. "Just making sure everything's alright at this end."  
Geoffrey looked over at him. Khepri, as a spider, he was adept at getting into and out of places he wasn't meant to be in, such as the palace. It was well over a kilometre of the ground, but spiders could scale walls with little difficulty, and the refractor field rendered him practically invisible at most ranges.

"You still owe me a supply route, you know." He replied.

Khepri grimaced. "The MPD aren't making our job easy, you know. The bastards even have concussion and EMP mines in the sewers. We can't do anything within the force – any mass desertions or homicides would be noticed quite easily, and that only leaves the long way round, outside the city."

"Too slow. What about airdrop?"

"Come on Geoff, you know how tight security is in the air, especially with anything from Echidnapolis. Max has this place locked down tight."

"Then we move."

"Excuse me?"

"Outside the city. Use the outer camps as staging grounds. Hard to find for anyone who isn't us, solves the problem of supplies. Our men bleed into the city slowly until we have every corner covered, then rise and deliver the killing blow. There will inevitably be some fighting, of course, but not long enough for the tables to turn. The city falls within days."

"It can't be as simple as that."

"Khepri, I know it's hard to swallow, but it works. I'm not talking battlefield tactics here, I'm talking political strategy, and that's what happens. I want us prepared within the week – I'm not moving any later, not after we've taken so long preparing in the first place."

* * *

"How'd it go buddy?" Sonic was on his feet next to Tails the moment he walked back into the room.

"Max was trying to sell off my tech for a truck. I denied the request, and I think I made him angry at me in the process. All in all, went pretty well."

"Good to know. Pity dad still hasn't resolved his power complex yet though." Sally didn't look up from the paperwork.

"At least you two are agreeing on something again." Tails could tell they would be arguing again in a few hours – it was like this every time. They argued, broke up, made up then argued again. It was becoming a constant cycle, and even his cold, calculating mind was beginning to be irritated by it.

Sally got up this time, making her way round the desk and over where to the other two stood. "Things will sort themselves out eventually…" she whispered.

Tails felt like he should say something, then out of the corner of his eye he spied Fiona creeping up, and in a smooth motion she brought a hand up around both Sonic and Sally's neck, and pushed them together. She took a few steps back to check the entangled couple, then beckoned Tails out of the room, the fox obediently following.

"What was that all about?" he asked her, after they were out of earshot.

"Shhh! Take a look." Fiona jabbed a thumb back at the door, and cracked it open a notch. Within, Sonic and Sally were already smooching away like the world was ending.

"_How_ did you know that was going to happen?" He was genuinely asking.

"Oh come on, those two are so predictable."

"You walked in, shoved them together and watched the fireworks. How is that in any way _predictable?_

"It's Sonic."

For once it seemed Tails was lost for an answer. Eventually he shrugged, sighed and thanked her. "Well, I only lose sleep if I can hear those two shouting through the wall, so if they're cool for now, I'm going to bed."

"It's almost dinner."

"I'm turning in anyway – I'm tired, I can grab something in the morning."

"Something's on your mind." Fiona was telling him, not making a question.

"It's just…" his mind sifted through possible explanations, grinding for the right one, but he wanted to tell her the truth. "Max is overstepping his mark."

"Is that it?" Fiona was clearly disappointed. Hands on hips, she proceeded to chide him for his worry. "He's a king, Tails, he doesn't have any mark to overstep."

"I walked in on him trying to sell my tech to G.U.N associates. He knew the technology belonged to me and he tried to bargain it off anyway, for a reward that would lose us the war. He believes monarchy gives him absolute power – he needs someone to put him in his place."

"Sounds like you did just that."

Tails looked up at her – she was a couple of inches taller than him – and shook his head sadly. "No, despite what I have accomplished, I'm still only sixteen, and that's what he sees as important. He has ruled for source-knows how long, and he feels the older you are, the smarter you are. He recognises my achievements, but not me. Someone else needs to put him in his place."

"You sound as if you want him dead."

"No, not dead, just reminded that he is not the driving force in everything. It makes me sick to see him so drunk on power so as to not realise that without a kingdom, he is nothing."

"You should have gone into politics." He had heard this sort of praise from Fiona before, but he couldn't work out why she took an interest in him this way.

"I'm too unorthodox for the courtroom, or even the guilds. It would be boring anyway – all the kingdom's politicians do these days are sit in a boardroom and sit through another of Max's lectures. That quite possibly would make me strangle the old monarch."

That brought a light chuckle from her at his droll jest. "That really would be treason."

"Perhaps it would be worth it. It would stop me throttling Sonic after he wrecks my lab again. Goodnight, Fiona. I'll see you in the morning – tell Telera I won't be at dinner, I don't want her to waste time cooking more than is going to be eaten." He gave her a last wave as he turned the corridor, heading for his rooms, which also served as a small laboratory. He found it enjoyable when he talked to her – it was always a pleasant experience to say the least, unlike Sonic, always talking about racing, or Retis, who had been a gladiator for some time before joining the freedom fighters. Amy wasn't bad to talk to – she seemed to be making an effort at least, and he voice had softened to grate less on his nerves. But something very small was different, it was different for everyone, but he couldn't work it out, despite his genius.

Back in the dimly lit corridor, Fiona leant back on the wall, breathing deeply to catch her breath. Why did this always happen to her, this heat in her chest, every time she talked to him? Felt like she was holding an overheated charge-pack for the Judgement every time. Next she would start to hyperventilate – or something close – so each conversation couldn't last for more than five to six minutes or he would have her taken to the sick bay. She wasn't making any sense of it, and it had been going on for a couple of years now, ever since she joined the team, in fact.

Staggering off the wall, trying to ignore the shaking in her legs, and staggered off down the corridor to the kitchen. She stumbled in as Telera was adding the garnish. A roast, one of the more exquisite things the freedom fighters could enjoy, was nearing completion.

_"Something wrong?"_ the tigress signed with a free hand, looking away from her work yet keeping track of it through practised skill.

"What? Oh- no, Tails wanted me to tell you he wouldn't be in for dinner, but it looks like I'm a little late."

_"Oh, never mind. I can chill some of it later for him, for the morning."_

"You might want to keep some heated for Sonic and Sally too, I think they're going to be a bit late."

_"They've made up their differences then. Someone is going to have to sort that out. I'll keep their cuts in the heating oven then."_

Fiona didn't reply, finally regaining her balance as she entered the dining room – another of the finer points that Sally's position within royalty allowed. Amy, Retis and Lupin were there already, and the latter pulled a chair out from the table to allow Fiona a place. The table itself was dark, polished wood, covered with a crimson cloth. It seemed the highlight of the small room – the rest was painted a lighter shade of red, the medium-sized rectangular table easily able to accommodate the small party dining that night.

After dinner was served the group commenced in silence, there being very little to say. Retis decided to start up conversation.

"Lupin, you get anything more than Robotnik's stench from the site?"

"Afraid not." He replied with a shrug, "I would have had to take a longer search to see. As it is, the rain and wind will have washed away the smell. Did you expect something else?"

"I'm with Telera on this one. I feel safer if there's something more to it – it makes me feel less like I'm being directed. Oh- this might help." He produced a small data chip from the pocket of his cerise jacket and passed it to Fiona. "You reckon you could give this to Tails? It was the most intact one I could find and perhaps it can tell us exactly what they were producing."

She took the chip. "Whatever it was, we can be sure they were only just beginning. The big egg feels safer when his defences are fully operational, and if this was the largest you could find…"  
"Actually…" he added, "…I only said it was the most intact one. There were a few larger, but explosions took them out before I could get to them, and one was still locked inside an operating machine. It's the best I could do."

"Well, it'll have to do, won't it?" it was a little disappointing, but it was hard enough to recover an intact anything from Robotnik's software. Most combot or legion variant was programmed with a self-destruct sequence, making it near-impossible to recover anything but burnt shrapnel from the corpses. The only examples of legion technology were ones that had malfunctioned, and these were generally low-class models and thus poor examples. The best studies were ones Tails had disabled with EMP blasts, and those had bits of themselves fried, the electrical pulse often damaging the important systems. Thus far, only a single one had survived almost fully intact.

Telera leaned over to inspect it, signing. _"It's a data core, right? Then it should contain programme information. I'm no expert on it, don't really take much to the science stuff, but data core stores information by definition in any case, and Robotnik wouldn't drop useless pieces of stuff into his robots. It has to have_ something _useful, even if it's only telling us how to activate the eyes."_

"I see your point. Well, Tails is probably sleeping now, so I'll give it to him in the morning. For now, we still have dinner to eat – you can't surpass yourself, it's too damn good already."

The tigress smiled in thanks, leaning back into her seat proper and resuming eating as Fiona turned the little data chip over and over in her hand. "I can't help thinking I've see this stuff before…" she murmured to herself.

"Nicole?" she asked the room itself, and waited for the brown-furred lynx to materialise, a holographic projection.

"Madam Fiona?" The AI was peculiar, and it always got to Fiona. She was polite and kind, if a little uncompromising, a side-effect of anyone who worked with Tails on his experiments.  
"Can you leave a message on Tails' comm, so when he wakes up he can come and see me? I want to ask him about the chip."

"Of course dear." That tone, thought it was not meant that way, still sounded a little patronising, as if she was talking to an eight year old. "Do you want me to send him to your room?"  
The idea of it, then the flicker of unwanted thoughts that passed through her mind made Fiona blush, though to her immense relief the others did not detect it, engrossed in the meal as they were. "N- no." she stammered, still blushing heavily, "Just wake us at the same time and get us both to the lounge."

"Alright." The hologram shimmered slightly as the light dispersed, then disappeared completely.  
Fiona turned back to her meal, thoughts scattered throughout her mind like a minefield.

She didn't know it, but Tails wasn't sleeping. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, head buried in his hands as his mind lobbed thoughts around like an ocean squall. He was thinking of everything – the king, Sonic and Sally, Fiona, Amy, Robotnik, G.U.N…very little avoided his noticed that night.

Except, perhaps, one thing that may have mattered.


	3. Prelude to Conflict iii

As requested, Nicole woke Fiona and Tails early with a light but pleasant chiming within their comm-links. Fiona knew where she was going and why, but predictably Tails began to ask questions to Nicole as the hologram flickered into life in his room.

"Why am I doing this?" was his first question, as he sat up in bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes.  
"Madam Fiona has requested you be woken, and go to the lounge. There is something she wanted to ask you about." The hologram had been positioned to sit on the end of the bed, portraying a little of Nicole's more casual nature.

"Why now? We see each other almost all day around the place, what does she want me for?"  
"There is something she wanted to give you, and I think she wanted to do it in private."

Tails furrowed his brow. Fiona had never given him anything…it must be important, or dangerous, for her to give it to him this early, and alone. He slipped off the bed and pulled on his gloves and shoes, padding out through the automatic doorway and down the dim corridors. He could sense a presence he assumed was Fiona's within the lounge, and tried to prepare himself for whatever she had to say.

As he entered, she spotted him even in the low light. "Tails – sorry for waking you, but this couldn't wait."

"Is something wrong?" he asked carefully as he took his space on the round, red sofa. "This isn't like you."

"Retis found this." She produced the data chip for him, and passed it over. He stared at it, turning it over in his hands, examining.

"Excuse me, is this a joke?" his tone was of surprise, tinged with anger.

"What?"

"This is my tech!" he waved it a little, "You woke me for this?"

"No! No! Retis picked it up in Robotnik's factory!" Fiona hurried to explain before Tails lost his cool. "He didn't know what it was so I told him I'd get you to find out!" to her immense relief, she wasn't getting all hot and flustered just yet.

"Robotnik's factory…" his surprised rage abated as quickly as it had appeared, and turned to confusion. "What is…" then returned. "That bastard got access to my technology! The complete sod was planning to use it against me – of all the yiffing people to get their hands on it, it had to be him. First he tries to kill us, but he can't be content with that. He has to steal my bloody skill and use it against us. I hope that's the only factory of those fucking things he was planning to build. I need to analyse this to see what he was planning…"

"Tails?" It was Fiona, forgotten in his irritation and anger, and she had shrunk back slightly against the back of the sofa. He relaxed, the anger draining away as he realised both how much of a fool he must look and what she must be thinking of him.

"Sorry…" he sank back into the seat. "I'm just pissed off at the tyrant, more than normal, at least. No-one takes my tech, it's just not done. On top of that, I have no idea what security measures he's got in place on this thing, and so I don't know what he put into it. Running it through the wringer is going to be a hit and miss day."

"Want any help?" She had woken him up, pissed him off. It was only polite to help him out.  
"What, you have the time spare? You're not training, or working or something?"

"Probably, but the others can manage without me for a bit. I woke you up, I'm just trying to help out." That bloody hot feeling was coming back again. With a violent effort she fought it down, but she felt she was probably shaking so visibly it wouldn't make a difference.

"Well, if you're not tired, we could start now. You shouldn't miss too much, if this goes according to plan."

"Alright then. Let's do this." She lifted herself out of the sofa with Tails, and followed him away from the lounge and towards the stairs that should lead them to the lab. The closer they got, the lower they went, the more the stairwell became whiter, more sterile, and the musty smell off furniture was replaced with that of disinfectant. That moment, Fiona realised that she hadn't been down to the lab before. As if sensing her thoughts, the two-tailed fox ahead of her started up conversation, falling into step beside her.

"I don't do many biological experiments, but keeping the workplace clean generally makes my tests more accurate."

"I thought you did weapons testing." She asked.

"Oh, that's in the MilesCorp facilities. I use the company for weaponry and military tech production and testing – the place is more built for it. This lab is for my personal work, computer software, chemical work and the occasional biological experiments, only with willing participants, of course. I worked with Nicole to design most of Telera's biochips, and with Rotor to help Bunnie with upgrading her weapon system."

"So this is for the projects you don't really want in the public eye?"

"That, or ones exclusively for the freedom fighters, or both." He agreed. Then he looked up at her. "No offense, but I didn't peg you as one to take an interest in this sort of thing."

"Oh, I'm not that good. I can field-strip the judgement in under a minute, and I can probably hack terminal software provided the security isn't too advanced, but I'm not much to shout about."

"Ask Lupin to hack a data terminal then say that again. I swear he doesn't know his way round a handheld."

She laughed at the small kindness, a little feeling of happiness, that she was above-average, in someone's book.

The door slid open as they approached, another Nicole apparition sparing them a salute at the doorway, before it slid shut behind them. He dropped the chip on a steel table and moved past it to the computer, Fiona trailing, taking in the lab. It was like a teenagers bedroom, but cluttered more with technology than pictures of scantily clad girls. Bits of half-finished software cluttered most surfaces, save a few completely Spartan ones, including a mostly-complete robotic limb of some variety. She pointed it out to him.

"Oh?" he started when she asked. "That's Bunnie's original roboticized limb, she donated it to me after we got her ones that weren't poisoning her. I was going to get around to disassembling it one day – to see exactly how the roboticization process takes place. Perhaps if we understood it more, the de-roboticization process would be less haphazard, but I doubt Rotor and the others would agree with me working on the detached arm of an old colleague. They were always traditional like that. Hold this."

She took the clump of wires proffered and stood awkwardly until he took them back. "I'm not sure if we want to hook it up directly – if it has a nuke virus it could crash Nicole, given enough time, but other proxy methods can damage the DataStream." He explained as he linked all manner of wire to it.

"We could hook it up to Nicole's old handheld." Fiona offered. "We all work on the comm-link now, if you kept it and shut off the wireless couldn't you work from there?"

He beamed at her. "I could kiss you but Amy might kill me. If you will excuse me, I have to go diving for that handheld." He turned away before he could see her flush heavily with the comment, and it thankfully subsided before he rose from yet another pile of electronics holding the comparatively old handheld. He prodded at the device for a few moments before face-palming and dropping it beside the data core. "Bloody hell…I never charged the thing." Yet another ten minutes spent rooting around for a power cable, which he then fixed into the bottom of the handheld and a socket in the wall.

"Listen, can you pry off the back of the handheld and stick the data core into it, while I root around and see if I can come up with the decryption software. It's here on a D-port somewhere…" he trailed off as he began his search through another pile.

Fiona decided to hold off telling him he should clean the place, and picked up something she assumed was a screwdriver and proceeded with a great deal of grunting to pry off the access plate on the back of the handheld. After the small purple-coloured panel fell to the floor with only a tinkle, completely out of proportion to how well it had been fixed on. Then she dropped the screwdriver, scooping up the data core in its place and wedging it in between two synaptic connectors she assumed had first formed part of Nicole's brain.

"Here we go!" Tails jerked upright, a small half-moon shape held between thumb and forefinger. "Can't remember the last time I used this. We don't normally hack computers – just break the door down. That's Sonic's preference."

"He isn't the most restrained." She agreed.

"Well, let's see where this gets us!" he shoved the D-port into a data-jack in the bottom of the handheld, flipping it over in the process to admire Fiona's handiwork. "Interesting choice of slots, but it should do the job. The synapse was meant for transfer of information, just as long as it doesn't pass through everything should be fine."

It took him an hour to navigate the painfully slow handheld system without Nicole within the machine, until he came to the wall of numbers and security that represented the stolen MilesCorp technology. A few deft keystrokes began to break down the security wall surrounding it, the advanced tech-hack doing the work for him.

"Sometimes it's just satisfying to do it without touching the board." He said by way of an explanation.

A classic game-style ping announced the completion of the hack to the pair of foxes, and they leaned in to see the results. Fiona couldn't make sense of it – reams and reams of data flashing by, but Tails took it in without pausing.

"Well, the tech is mine, but he's responsible for the programming. Good to see he didn't completely steal my work. My real question is why he went to the trouble of taking my technology? The electronics could be shown as mine, but Robotnik's technology is too easily recognisable."

"Maybe he wanted something to link with your systems? If the electronics were the same, wouldn't it be easier?"

"Physically, yes, I see your point. It would make the software more ready to accept it, recognising that it's familiar tech, though he would have to still create suitable software to get into the system. Yes, that could be it, but then there are two other questions. The first is what would be able to get close enough. The second is how would it get past Nicole?" he furrowed his brow once more in frustration. "I can't tell the reason at a glance – I'll spend a little more time on it later, when more urgent matters, such as the whole Sonic/Sally situation we have going on, have been resolved."

* * *

"Is it me, or is the boss going out of his way to put us in bad positions?" The general of the Nightmare legion stared out over the camp. It was not ideal – a derelict village transformed into an armed camp in barely two days. Roads had been barricaded, cellars had been emptied to store supplies and armoured units were housed in the warehouses. There were four other similar bases like this, all situated in and around abandoned villages. His was not the largest – a canny decision, to draw fire away from the key base in the event they were attacked. The biggest target was always the most obvious, so he made sure he wasn't the biggest – nor the smallest; the smallest target was seen as something easy to eliminate. In essence, the trick to not being attacked was to appear average.

If anyone ever saw the base, and it had occurred a few times, they often ignored it, assuming it the king's work, and those few who did report it were sent replies that the soldiers were there to act as a defence against the Robotnik Empire. Geoffrey made sure the reports never reached the king.

The general himself, a well-built veteran – a falcon – peered down at the arguing soldiers with a critical eye. "He does as he thinks best!" the general snapped, his beak clacking loudly, accentuating his words. The two offenders' necks snapped up to him, standing on the balcony of the longhouse.

"Sir, my apologies!" one called with a tremor in his voice.

Turk looked down at him, a monkey, second rank. "I don't give a shit about your apologies, soldier, just do your damn duty. We will be moving before week's end!"

The man saluted crisply and jogged off, his mate following close behind, having seconded the salute. Turk turned his head to his second in command, Myro. The creature was a rat, weighed down by a heavy Germanic accent. As such, it was near-impossible for him to be understood by anyone but those who knew his peculiarities well. "What are the reports from the other camps?"  
"Zey are proceeding as planned, commander. Geoffrey's orders will be issued tonight, and so ve shall have to be ready."

Do not mistake Turk for a violent man – he valued the lives of his men. However, unlike Antoine, was less worried about expending them to accomplish his objectives. Whereas the coyote may have pulled his men back if an obstacle began to prove insurmountable, Turk was wont to just send more men in, change strategy. He valued his men, but he was not afraid to use them. His stubbornness meant that the line where that transition was made was quite far away, however.  
"I hope that bastard knows what he's doing." He referred to Geoffrey. "I'm not sending my men to the slaughter, I'm sending them to win a war."

"Yes, but he is not ze military man, general. He does not know ze capabilities of soldiers."

"Well, he'd better learn." The general finished, "or he will find himself losing very quickly."

"Vill you abandon him zen, when it occurs, I mean?"

The general snorted at the idea, as if nothing could be more ludicrous. "No, I keep my word."

* * *

"Heads down, come on, I didn't train you like this for nothing."

The team of six ducked down behind a rusted section of piping as the searchlight passed overhead. The warehouse had been used as a tech storage for the Nightmare Legion, until Jack-knife, some private security contractor, moved in and set up camp. Lucky for him, Pete's team had been given the job of retrieving the more 'sensitive' equipment before the contractors decided to see what exactly was inside the warehouse.

Each one in the six man team was kitted out the same way. Matt-black combat fatigues, concussion and EMP grenades, a Mercy II combat pistol, and a pressure-backpack. Each pack was stuffed with whatever electronics had been labelled as important, and the pressurised, padded insides proofed against the objects tinkling around inside and giving away their position.  
This was the fourth trip of similar objective, but finally probability had played its hand and they had botched an alarm-beam on the way out. Now the contractors were on alert, though through nothing less than five years of skill and training, along with a handful of luck, the party had not yet been sighted. Thankfully it put the contractors a little more at ease, with the mere possibility of a ghost in the machine.

As the pool of light cast by the industrial grade spotlight passed over and away, Pete found a tap on his shoulder.

"want me to EM it?"

He looked back at the soldier as if he was an imbecile. "It would give us away. If not where we are, but that we are even here at all. Now, move!" he rose slightly to allow his legs movement, and did his best to sprint silently while remaining level with the pipes, across the darkened compound. Stopping at a water drum, he peered round the edge, seeing first the lit end of a smoke stick and then the soldier breathing it. Nondescript standard-issue combat gear, like most contractors had in the bulk of their force. "Pass me a WASP." He signed back, and held one hand behind him until he felt the circular tubing slide into his hand.

The WASP, or Workforce & Armed Sentry Prevention unit, was only a stunner, a shot that disabled the target by shutting down the nervous system for a moment, forcing them into a state of unconsciousness.

The trigger clicked electronically, and the invisible lace of electricity whipped out, making contact briefly but sufficiently on the soldiers' exposed calf. As his nerves spasmed as one and his brain shut him down by way of reaction, Pete jutted out to catch the creature before he could hit the floor. As he caught him and dragged him back into the shadows, checking the warrior for implants or useful attire, he caught snatches of a conversation.

"…stopped responding…"

"…going to check…"

"…into mental shutdown…"

"Targets acquired." The last two words were not issued from a living voice box, issuing instead in a monotone from the vocal transmitter of a security drone. It seemed to Pete as he looked up into its optics that it, though it was impossible, looked forlorn, disappointed.

A slot opened in the base and an electric Taser folded out of the space. Bugger, Pete decided. Being taken alive left the chance for interrogation. At least dead you took your secrets with you. In one motion he stood and launched himself sideways into the bubble of a drone, stealth abandoned now their position was now known. The drone beeped in protest as he closed over the optics, and the drone's simple programming sifted through hundreds of protocols in milliseconds, and arrived at the most suitable conclusion.

Self-destruct.

For Pete, the world exploded, hurling him away and tearing his armour and skin with red-hot fragments of fibreglass and steel. He cried out as he landed, heavily, bits of burning metal having cut through arteries, muscles, even a torn eye that now leaked a thin, watery fluid. Just like that he had blown it, and it had hit him back. He heard the other five rise, guns drawn as security began to tighten the noose.

Determined to at least go down spitting in their faces, he lurched upright, blood mixing with spittle, and stumbled to his feet, Mercy in his hand. His scouter, damaged but still able enough to put out a fragmented display, warned him of his first foe. Spinning through the pain, ignoring it like the practised veteran he was, the pistol barked, sending an SS round through the man's forehead. He watched him drop, the hole in his forehead, before staggering behind cover as semi-automatic fire joined the fray. Fragmentation and solid fire gouged chips out of the stone bollard he found as his shelter, scraping rough surfaces across his already scarred armour and face, but he grunted and gritted his teeth, not giving ground.

He blindsided a couple of shots, raising the pistol over cover and pulling the trigger, and heard a shout of denial as a lucky hit incapacitated another trooper. The fire dulled a little, some of the guard switching to single-shot fire to conserve ammunition – it wasn't needed, they had stockpiles of the stuff.

He heard the familiar snap of Mercy pistols, his team giving hell for leather to anything that showed itself, and he could tell, both by their whoops of delight and the bullet impacts that they had down at least a dozen more than he had. He felt cheated, he felt he should even that score. Peering at the scouter for only a moment – the flickering, damaged screen hurt his eyes – to gauge target locations, he rolled out from behind the bollard and emptied the clip into the guards as he completed the roll to behind the second one. Stopping to reload and to catch his breath, Pete snatched a look to see his damage. Three were confirmed kills, the soldiers stupid enough to have risen from cover, and another two were nursing wounds, one to the arm, a minor graze, another having taken a gut wound, probably fatal. The fact he may die was some consolation of the veteran's own mortality, his life signs beginning to ebb on the heads-up-display.

One of the life signs winked out, one of the team dead through some method, probably the standard, since he hadn't heard any grenades go off yet. Speaking of which…

His hands dropped the pistol by one knee, moving to his belt and prying loose a pair of concussion grenades. One in each hand, he thumbed off the pins and tossed them as hard as he could over his shoulders. He counted to three, retrieving the pistol at two, as the small detonators went off with deep thumps, then he rose on three. The darkness had served its purpose – both had gone off behind enemy cover, and Pete, unaffected from his hiding spot, felt a little trigger happy as he snapped off deadly shots into targets blundering around, shaking their heads and blinking to wave off the dizzying, blinding, deafening effects of the stun-weapons.

He was dead from that moment, he just didn't know it. A few loners wearing helmets, or those smart enough to be wary, or those just plain lucky, recovered faster, semi-automatic Retaliation combat rifles rising to firing position and muzzle flare lighting the night. One shot cracked through his arm, firing nerve cells and causing him to cry out as the Mercy slipped from his pained grasp, another, indiscriminate, shattered the bone in his thigh, and he dropped to one knee in pain, the bone grinding together and drawing it out in his mind.

Finally he realised death had come for him, and accepted it. With one free arm, he reached once more for his belt, and pulled the pins from his EMP grenades, determined to deny the enemy their prize. He counted in his head, three counts, and only finished one before the bullets hit, penetrating his skull and shattering his brain-case. As it emptied onto the concrete, the grenades went off. It wouldn't destroy the tech, but burn out the receptors and fry the software.

Ten minutes after his death, the remaining spec-ops soldier fell to concentrated fire, triggering his own EMP as instructed, just like his comrades. Just as his commander, he was engulfed briefly in a blue orb of pseudo-electricity, his own act of defiance. As the light died and darkness returned, it was pulled away by bright, harsh spotlights converging on the corpses. One soldier, clad in heavier carapace armour than the others, and hefting a significantly larger gun, rose from his position and stomped over to the spec-ops, kneeling by their bags and sifting through the tech inside.

"Do we know what this does?" he asked through the comm-set.

"I don't think so." The reply was from the team techie, examining Pete's own satchel of stolen electronics. "I can identify some of the components, but I reckon we'll need a more expert opinion."

"Get me Rotor. Get me a meeting with him; I want to know exactly what this is before tomorrow sundown."

* * *

Twelve miles away, in five camps, the order was given simultaneously to begin the attack.

Three hours later, as the horizon was garnished with the sunrise, the first shells dropped on Mobotropolis.


	4. Command Bunker i

The king was asleep, only for another hour or so – for he woke early in the day, but not everyone shared his ease. The air was permeated by a feeling of dark unease, guards found themselves tense, or grinding their teeth, without understanding why. An aide spent almost half an hour thinking of the contents of his will before wondering why.

It would have been no surprise then, to have known Antoine felt the same – except he had reasons. He padded through corridors only his access allowed, pursued by the same feeling of dread as the others, while his heart and mind walked their own nightmares in darkened halls.

His mind trod rooms filled with troubles with his career. He knew the king was gunning to replace him, to find a commander as competent but more ruthless, less caring of life. The king wanted a man who could get things done, not one who saved lives at the expense of victory. He knew the list of potential candidates – Geoffrey had forwarded him the list, without the king's consent, with a footnote recording his consolations on his predicament.

Max seemed to be giving him a choice. Kill or leave. Antoine, for all his misgivings, his sense of honour and loyalty, was not prepared to accept either option. He would not send his men to the slaughter for a wasted trip, and he would not step down in favour of someone who would. He shook his head in bemusement and unhappiness as he pondered this conundrum.

His heart stalked corridors filled with images of Bunnie, what she had said. His sorrow was for her, not for him. He was aware that she could not have children, an unfortunate side-effect of her bionic limbs and their power connections, and this fact had tormented her as long as they had been together. Then it had happened.

_"Ah can't do this anymore…Ah'm sorry…" she had explained, tears welling as she did a sterling job of fighting them. "It's not right…Antoine, We have to break up. Ah'm sorry…"_

She had run off, not giving him the time to explain, to console…he wanted to explain, but she would no longer see him. He had to wait it out. As he heard, his heartbeat sped up as he thought of her, his footfalls muffled by the carpet.

One problem at a time, he decided. He brushed aside his military problems – Bunnie was more important, more important by about half of Mobius, than his current profession. If anything happened, if he had her, he could make something work.

He heard a click as his comm came on.

"Commander?"

"Yes?" he answered, pausing in his line of thought.

"Could you come up to the observation rail? There's something I need your opinion. I think I'm seeing barrel-flash from the jungle."

"From this distance? I will be right there." He picked up the pace, spinning on the spot and near-jogging back the way he had come, ascending stairs and inclines in corridors. The doors to the wide balcony that ringed the expansive palace. Each one was made of carved ebony, though panels either side could slide away to reveal emergency blast doors, able to turn the palace into a castle, along with other security features. He threw the doors wide and marched out onto the balcony, extruding a powerful exterior his soldiers and guards respected him for. He was not head of security at the palace, but was often taken as the expert on all things combat, a fact for which the actual head of security resented him for.

Moving to beside the guard who stood there already, he followed his pointing arm out into the dense woodland. He watched, and saw why he had been summoned.

"Merde…" he shuddered. "Tze barrels elevated for maximum range, tze artillery space to avoid direct contact…we are under attack, mon ami. Sound tze alarm and wake tze king. I will begin preparations."

The man, in his red and gold armour, saluted and jogged off through the open door, and Antoine could hear the orders passing through the communicators as more and more units within the palace entered combat status.

Antoine switched frequencies to a secure channel, a way to those he knew he could trust.

"Nicole? Is this Nicole?" he called down it.

"Antoine? Yes, is something wrong?" the AI answered politely.

"I need to speak with tze princess and tze freedom fighters. It is urgent, please."

"As soon as possible."

* * *

Tails was thoroughly enjoying streaming through the data on the core, picking it apart.

"Looks like he's trying on something pretty advanced. Can't be sure if it would work, though. I've never seen him try somethings this…discrete. He's all about the full frontal assault, I haven't known him to actively go behind our backs. I'd peg Colin down as the discrete one."

"Colin?" Fiona questioned over his shoulder.

"Snively, that short guy in the interface suit."

Fiona was about to reply, to be cut off by the beeping comm-link.

"Tails and Fiona here." Tails got there first.

"Both of you? Good. It's Nicole. Antoine needs to speak to all of you; says it's important. I'm preparing a holo-state for him in the dining room.

Everyone else has already been alerted." The AI chirped.

"On our way." He replied, and closed the link, spinning in the chair to face Fiona. "We're going to have to cut this surgery short for now, as I'm sure you heard. Let's go, come on." He lifted himself from the seat and was turning towards the door when something made him pause. Spinning back to the handheld, he pulled the power cable out with a splutter of sparks. "Don't want it trying to jump to the system through the cable." He gave as explanation. Once again he turned to the door, this time offering Fiona his arm. "It would be impolite of me if I were not to escort you from this maze, my dear." He told her in a mock display of chivalry, bowing low as he did so.

Despite the joke and falsity, the other's heart fluttered for a moment at the closeness. Still the reason eluded her, though it felt closer than before – only just out of reach, drifting at the corners of her vision.

Arm in arm they left the lab, but though Fiona could not sense it, Tails was still distant. He was being kind, of course, but he was polite and kind to all his friends. To him this was just being a little extravagant, a small jest. He was still no closer to her, though she was to him.

* * *

If Nicole had been able to smirk, blush or smile from within the computer core, she would have. Tails was not as observant as she was in these matters, and she could see little things; posture, expression, movement, in Fiona that gave away more than the younger fox noticed. There was something between her and him, most definitely, if not the reverse – Tails was extremely capable and adept at disguising his own feelings, but this lack of knowledge seemed genuine. He really didn't know that there was anything more than a friendship for Fiona.

As she watched this, on the verge of laughter within the core, she also watched the other members of the team congregate around the dining table. Within that room a hologram of her flickered into life with the others.

"Did Ant say what he needed to talk to us about?" Sonic asked the lynx bare moments after she appeared.

"No, he only said it was important. He did not divulge the details; I assume he will do that now, though, does it help that he sounded hurried?" the replied, calmly.

It was Sally's turn to speak. "Where was he? You keep tabs on all of us, where was he when he told you?"

"Within the palace, Sally. I did not hear fighting – do not fear for your family. No, don't deny it, please. They are safe. Antoine is a brave man, and he would have been at the forefront if anything was happening. They are safe." Nicole placated the princess, who had started at the mention of the palace, and now whom relaxed visibly at the reassurance.

"Sal, if you want, I can jog over there, make sure?" Sonic patted the squirrel girl on her shoulder, squeezing her briefly in a companionable hug.  
"No- wait for Antoine. Go after, know what to expect."

Sonic felt the instinctive dismissal come to mind, but as it did so the rebuke Tails had given him, to think a little, followed it. "Sure." He heard himself say, "Just a thought."

The party lapsed into silence until Amy finally noticed and asked Nicole, who hadn't moved, "Where's Tails?"

"He and Fiona were in the lab, analysing the electronic that Retis had given Fiona yesterday. They will be here momentarily."

As if by prophecy, they did so a couple of minutes later, hands dropping from each other long before they came into view. Amy ran over to Tails and hugged him, and the fox glanced over his shoulder at Sonic and shrugged as best he could. Fiona waved and hugged Telera as the friends they were, a girls' tradition, so Tails was told. It seemed to be one of the few things Sonic was completely, utterly right about.

As smiles and hugs came to their conclusion, a second hologram flickered into place next to Nicole.

"Hey Ant, what's the biz?" Sonic chuckled to his general friend, and everyone else turned to him.

"Eeht is with tze utmost displeasure that I must ask your assistance, freedom fighters. I would not force tze burden upon you if I had another option." Antoine was bedecked in his full combat gear, and his pins that marked him as a Gold Flame, general of the Mobian military.

"A burden?" Lupin whistled. "We can bear it."

"I sincerely hope so. Less than an hour ago, tze first shells of an artillery barrage detonated within Mobotropolis. Tze shells were self-propelled, maintaining a steep flight trajectory before descending. Tze shells are not of Legion manufacture, tzey were produced by MilesCorp. No!" he pleaded as Tails' eyes flared in anger at the implication. "I do not blame you for this, mon ami. Eeht was not my intention. I know zat you produce munitions and weaponry for tze Acorn military, and zat is my concern. Tze troops are ours, or once were. I have begun mobilisation, but I have no idea how many of mes troupes have turned traitor. I need people I can trust beside me. I know some of tze loyalist regiments, but I want you beside me."

"Have any opposing soldiers entered the city yet?" once the blame was no longer his, Tails had relaxed.

"Not to my knowledge. But tze fighting is concentrated around tze gates. I regret to say zat I am not fully prepared for this war…Sally, may I speak to you privately?"

The others filed out of the room, saying goodbye to Antoine, along with promises of aid. Nicole remained, the only one who had to remain to retain the connection.

"What is it Ant?" Sally asked the coyote, as a change came over him.

"Eeht is Bunnie…she broke up with me, last week. I cannot speak with her…would you?"

"Ant…I'm sorry- yes, I'll talk to her." She had traipsed into Knothole a couple of days ago, and was living in a small hotel on the outskirts.

"Thank you. That's all I wanted to say." He wouldn't say any more, and Nicole broke the link, unbidden.

"We should move, find out what's going on." She explained to the princess, as she called the others back in.

"Sonic, you're going in. Get there, see what you can do to help Antoine. Retis, Lupin, Telera, you follow. Fiona, gear up and start scouting out the edges of their forces. Nicole will go with you. Tails, see what you can get on their weaponry. Amy, you help him."

They all agreed, though Fiona felt cheated that she wasn't going with Tails. Then Sonic noticed, "What are you doing Sal?"

"Antoine asked a favour of me. I'm taking care of that then I'll join you all at Mobotropolis."

To her relief no-one tried to question the idea. It was protection of her privacy. Sally left the room first, and Lupin, Fiona, Amy, Retis and Telera filed out to equip themselves suitable. Nicole remained a few moments longer, curtsied to Sonic and Tails, the only two still in the room, then phased out too.

"You're learning." Tails joked.

"I want Antoine to still be alive when I'm finished." He replied, and jogged from the room, effectively ending the conversation, but Tails had one last thing to say, something Sonic didn't hear.

"I hope it was for Sally, I hate this between you."

* * *

To the immense relief of every one of the king's aides, Alicia had been able to placate the king and confine him to his quarters, emerging later with a smile and a reassurance that the king would not be out for some time as he raged quietly.

"We need to find out exactly who is attacking us and why." Queen Alicia Acorn told the council. "If this is as general Antoine fears, it could cause any number of problems with the citizenry. Mr Prower?"

Tails sat up and the back of the seat came with him. "Would you like the full report?"

"Just a summary. Time is of the essence."

Tails smiled in response. While there was no love lost between he and the king, Alicia Acorn was another matter. Though she was less wont to attend, she was a political animal, and had a brain in her head that was quite the envy of many people. Her looks, which sally had inherited, were stunning even to Tails, a pragmatic man of function less than aesthetic. He found it more of a pleasure to talk to her and the councillors, opposed to the company of the king.

"Well, I can confirm from analysing shell fragments that they are MilesCorp weaponry, and since all of my shipments are into the military, the guilds, or security contractors, we can assume that either they have been stolen or that the men and women I have sent them to have been coerced into this. I expect the latter, Amy took the time to search for any thefts or abductions of this level of technology." The hedgehog girl smiled at her mention, enjoying the opulent surroundings. "She found, aside from the occasional loss of a rifle or pistol, and in one case a light buggy, nothing on this scale has occurred. As for enemy numbers, we can estimate that they number at somewhere near ten-thousand fighting soldiers, including tank and artillery crews. To my knowledge that is fully half of our soldiery, excluding the contractors and palace guards."

"What is your assessment of the situation?" the head of palace security, a badger by the name of White, asked, adjusting his bionic eye.

"Strategically, I cannot say. Antoine would know, but as we know he is fighting to hold them back. Politically I would say tenuous. It would be foolish to say that everyone sides for the king, and so I can expect that at least some of the people within the city are siding with the separatists. That number will probably rise if they begin to exhibit propaganda. These can be silenced through the MPD and controlled use of our own propaganda. My biggest concern is the contractors."

"How so?" White prompted.

"As you know, the security contractors, Jack-Knife, Stonewall, etcetera are basically regimented mercenaries. They will fight for whatever side has the most money. We will want to win them over. If not to fight for us then to at least deny the enemy their use."

"I think I know how we can do that." The voice came from the councillor of Citizenry.

"Can we not just did into the coffers and pay them that way?" Alicia asked him.

"It would be impractical, my queen. If we approach them directly, they will correctly guess the reason, and bide their time, to see if the other side makes a better offer. If another offer was made, we would have to offer ever more money until we surpassed our competitor. I think I have an alternative."

"Hmm?"

"The drug lords, black-market dealers, the underworld. In my role I have collaborated a sort of network ranging through all aspects of society. If I use this network to approach these aforementioned influences, we can use them. We offer them money enough to hire the contractors to 'defend their assets'. Knowing that the underworld is a great supplier for weapons and armour and certain technology, they will move to defend this important assets, to ensure they do not fall into enemy hands. Directly we will have no influence over them, but at least this way we can make sure the field stays even. Tell me, Mr Prower, Miss Alicia, do you think this is possible?

Tails deferred to the queen as his rule of respect, beckoning her to have the first say.

Her reply was short. "I do not like using such volatile methods, but if your assessment is correct, I will support it in lieu of another option."

Tails felt something a little more elaborate was necessary. "It is certainly possible. I'm not sure about the likeliness of it going ahead, however. The underworld has money, what would they need more of it for? I will need confirmation that it will work."

"Everyone wants money, especially the value of Acorn coin. If you doubt my abilities, Mr Prower, please remember I have this position for a reason."

"I'm not doubting you, minister, I am doubting the pliability of your cat's paws. Nonetheless, I will bow to your choice as with the queen, in lieu of a better option."

The queen nodded to all those present, accepting the choice gracefully. "Now, onto the matter of who is leading them…"

* * *

"Peculiar…I haven't see this manufacture before…" Rotor peered into the series of lenses magnifying the circuit board. "It doesn't help that you brought it to me damaged."

"We didn't exactly have a choice." Tyrus huffed to the walrus, "they set off EMP grenades as they died. I couldn't well go too close to it with that going on."

"Then use your damn loaf!" Rotor snapped at the Jack-Knife officer. "They were clearly getting this stuff out of somewhere, somewhere you were guarding. There will be more or my name's Colin Robotnik! I can't do anything with this. Find me something intact and I may be able to help."

"I could do without the patronising tone."

"And I could do without newly-promoted contractors walking in on my work and dumping a lump of charcoal in front of me then telling me to tell me what it was before they firebombed it. Get me something I can go on or please, don't come back."

The man scooped up the piece of burnt electronic and stomped out of the office, glaring at every officer or worker he passed by. Rotor barely spared him a second glance, looking back down to his work with a grunt. With one hand he moderated the half a dozen dials on the portable radar and with is other hand typed in lines of coding into the computer screen to his right.

Unlike Tails, Rotor's desk was clearer, more professional that the younger scientist. He had space for the computer, his other less-common equipment and the centre was clear for miscellaneous work. Shifting the lens system aside he brought his more important project to the fore.

Dumping the new control system onto the workspace, he picked up the welding torch and soldering iron, plugging it into the computer and waiting as Nicole appeared on the screen to help him sift through the current software.

"It's still not giving us much of an increase. If we want to meet standard demand, I think we'll have to configure the retargeting matrix." The little Nicole avatar explained, strolling across his desk. "Oh, and there's a war on, in case you haven't heard yet."

"Well we can- what? When did this start?" he exclaimed loudly to the little avatar as she jumped from the surface and expanded to life-size.  
"Yesterday morning the shelling of Mobotropolis commenced. The other freedom fighters are there already, helping coordinate the defence. Or in Sonic's case, being the defence. Tails told me to leave you be for the time being, to keep MilesCorp afloat, but when the contractor walked in I figured to intervene."

"I'm missing your logic." He frowned at her.

"The talk of fighting, EMP grenades for Christ sakes, special ops teams. I got the gist. I know the orders aren't exactly coming from the brass, but I want you to stay here. You are technically one of the freedom fighters, and they need someone besides me in Knothole in case the separatists decided to turn their hand to the outlying cities. Sally and Bunnie are here for the time being, but I suspect they will be moving soon."

"What security measures are in place?" Rotor was already thinking of his strategy.

"I mobilised as many of my legion units as I could, and placed them at key points around the city as well as major entrances, with Onslaught squads patrolling the outer limits as an early warning system."

"That will do for now. I want to set up a secure link with our forces in Mobotropolis, and get word to the other settlements to get whatever forces they can ready for defence."

"On it now." The avatar phased out.

Rotor rose from the desk, leaving the office and marching away towards the exit.

"We're moving to code Magenta!" he bellowed to anyone within the sound of his voice, "an enemy seeks to overthrow the kingdom, and so Knothole will be a prime target. Prepare for its defence!"


	5. Command Bunker ii

Despite his earlier brevity and assurance that all was well, the Minister of Citizenry could tell how foolhardy, how hazardous it would be to play out. Trotting through the streets to the appointed meeting point his nerves frayed with each step. Thanks to him, the streets of Mobotropolis were mostly free of rubbish and open crime, and everyone was fed somehow. Unfortunately, his method of communication, through a network of dukes, shop owners or gang members, could mean that he ran into anyone at any time, and his 'ears' were not always reliable sources. Spinning to his left and down an alley, descending a set of steps into a dim room…

"I ain't hangin' here for long." One of the shadows explained. "So whad'ya want?"

"I want you to offer your boss lots of money to hire Stonewall." He put it very bluntly, knowing the gangster's inability to comprehend articulate speech. One of the less advantageous pieces of the network, but nonetheless effective.

"What you want me to tell him?" the rough voice asked.

"You know who it's from. Tell him that he will probably lose most of his customers if the separatists get through the gates. Hire them to defend his holdings."

"Aight. And the money?"

The minister flicked out a card from his pocket. "This will cover expenses and a little extra for your little gang. Just remember if you decide to use the money another way, we will come down on you, hard."

"Hey, hey." The minister saw a slight movement as the figure raised his hands in mock surrender. "Chill, we use the money how you asked, don't fret about it."

The minister tossed the card onto the floor between them and backed out slowly, heart thumping in his chest, up the stairs. The moment he was out he wheeled away, walking as fast as he could without drawing attention, away from the point of meeting. After two years of successful work in this trade he still couldn't stand the presence of the deep dealers. The dukes and duchesses were pleasant and some of the middle-class were quite happy to see him about a chat, but the underworld gang members and drug circles were the worst of company. Each time he spoke to one it felt as if a gun were at the back of his head, and the hand tightening on the trigger…rightly so, for it had happened to him before. He had no wish for it to occur again.

* * *

Antoine found himself weaving and ducking through fire coming from the forest below as he moved along the battlements. The wall was a solid reminder of the power within Mobotropolis. Rising two-hundred feet into the air, an advanced fusion of stone and metal, the actual firing step, the battlements, were built like bunkers. Above them was a solid roof of yet more concrete, stone and steel, and the firing spaces were standing height, giving ample room for cover. It did not leave them completely invulnerable. Three tiers of firing bunkers were set into the wall, and the lower two were receiving the most direct fire as the top was pummelled by longer-ranged weaponry.

Antoine commanded his forces from the second tier, away from the thickest fire but close enough to be a presence on the battlefield.

Only a few steps away from him, a pair of Emerald Flames traded fire with enemy soldiers. He could see that their weapons were beginning to empty of shots, and their armour had been scored by glancing bullets and stone chips. Even the toughened plates of the Victory suits could not hold out forever, and the four hours of continuous fighting had taken its toll. One of the soldiers dropped against the wall, sagging as he struggled to regain his breath as a hand landed on his shoulder.

"Oh god- sir, thank the source." He sighed, panic subsiding as he saw who it was.

"Report?" Antoine asked.

"The sergeant sent us down here to fill in a gap, to make sure fire came from every angle. He told us that all we had to do was convince them there was more of us."

"Your sergeant has made an error in his judgement. Tze strategy is sound on occasion, but we are fighting for defence. Get a message to him, concentrate fire on one location at a time."

"Yes sir!" the two soldiers saluted as best they could from a crouch, and turned away, jogging off down the line, keeping below the firing lanes. Antoine watched them go, giving himself thanks that his men still followed his orders. Something shrieked overhead, before an explosion sounded and a sheet of rubble fell by as a rocket shattered part of the upper tier. Thankfully the weapons were MilesCorp tech. While it did mean they were inevitably advanced, it also meant they knew exactly what to expect levelled at them.

A stream of high cal. bullets ripped across the second tier, and Antoine ducked low as bits of the wall spun off, sometimes scoring across his armour or face. As the maelstrom subsided he rose quickly, a trained eye sighting down the barrel of the Voltage rifle, and tugged on the trigger in a three-shot burst. The trio of shots streaked away, all AFD manufacture, to explode in the treeline. Three confirmed kills, he noticed, before ducking back again. A present from Tails, the high-velocity Voltage rifle was his signature weapon, and it had performed admirably on the occasions he had used it. Those occasions had been rare – war was uncommon these days, only minor skirmishes occurring between the Acorns and the Robotnik Empire, so a part of him, he admitted, was enjoying this.

He began barking orders into the communicator, and found himself halfway through when everything went silent apart from a few smatterings of fire still passing between forces, then that too ceased. "Belay zat last command! Tzey are retreating!" he called down the line.

A cheer went up from his forces, running the length of the wall like a Mexican wave as the cry moved further and further. Antoine did not join them in the celebrations. He knew the value of raising morale, but he also knew this was only the beginning.

The immediate danger gone, he rose to standing and looked back out over the city. Sure as hell the artillery had done its work, and several plumes of thick black smoke rose from various quarters, yellow flames licking at their base. He could hope that the fires would be managed – he could not spare forces from the wall to do so. Anyone in the city was on their own to him.

Making his way towards the stairs, he filed down along with the other soldiers coming and going. They gave him his space, convinced he was on more important duties than they were. Halfway to the lower deck, he saw someone he recognised.

"Hartley!" he called out to the soldier. The man was new, recently promoted to Azure Flame, the second rank within a squad, but his potential for leadership had given Antoine cause to watch him closely. Seeing who addressed him, the salamander saluted crisply and fell into step beside the general.

"Yesss, commander?" a peculiar reptilian trait gave him the hissing common to snakes, but a stronger presence and better attitude.

"Which deck have you come from?"

"The sssecond, commander."

"What are tze casualties, from your estimation?"

"It'sss hard to guesss, but I would sssay…only a few. No sssquads inactive, casssualtiesss spread evenly…better than I think we would have expected. My sssquads commander wasss killed in the action."

"Then have a field promotion to Scarlet Flame. Your men will need a leader, be one."

The dark green salamander almost tripped on the stairs as he heard the words, and for a moment all that came from his mouth was a discordant hissing. "Are you…sssure?"

"You are a leader, mon ami. You are quite tze soldier, and yes, I think you deserve it. You can cope. We need a strong commanding presence on tze walls to maintain tze defence. Zat will be all."

The soldier jogged on ahead, beaming with pride at his new rank – or at least, displaying more emotion than can be said for most reptilians, as Antoine trudged towards ground level at a more measured, solemn pace. As soon as the fighting had stopped, his thoughts had once again turned to Bunnie. Stepping through the artificial and close hallways of the wall into the sunlit streets, he glanced up. From this level, most of the smoke could not be seen for the buildings rising on either side, something which may give some civilians the solace of ignorance.

As he trudged quietly through the streets, earning waves and cheers and thanks from passers-by that recognised him, he missed it all. He had turned introspective for a bit, to try and calm his inner storm.

In the distance came the wail of fire engines as teams raced to combat the infernos bursting up around the city, and Antoine paused for a moment to listen, remembering something he probably should have checked on.

"Sonic, how is tze fire-fighting?" he asked, adjusting the frequency accordingly.

The return came back from his comm-link. "You never told me there would be this many Ant, too many guns?"

"Far too many. Are tzey under control?"

"Mostly. I'm spending most of my time running through buildings to see if anyone's still inside, them getting them out as soon as possible. What's things like up front?"

"Tze fighting has stopped for now. Tze wall has held."

"Good to know. Want to meet up at the palace?"

"Not today, Sonic. I 'ave to remain at tze wall, ensure tze defences remain intact. I hope to see you soon, but it will not happen today."  
"Awwww… never mind then." Sonic sounded dejected, a little unhappy about it. "See ya soon." He shut the link.

* * *

"Hello? Who is it?" Bunnie asked loudly as there came a knock at the door of the dingy little hotel. It truly was a rundown little place, the wallpaper seemed to have come from the old era and the furniture had probably been bought from Bunnie's grandma. Most of it couldn't bear the weight of her cybernetics, so in the end she had formed a rough pillow-chair-thing out of cushions, and spent her time sitting on either that or the bed.

She had been given a lot to think about, after she had run out on Antoine…a bright recollection assailed her for a moment as she recalled herself telling him…and her time had been spent thinking of what she should do next.

"It's Sally."

Bunnie's head jerked upright and she launched herself to her feet, robotic legs clanking heavily on the floor as pistons and hydraulics shifted position. She walked carefully to the door, opening it with her organic arm and letting the squirrel princess into the small room.

"Source, you really are staying here?" Sally asked, inspecting the apartment dubiously.

"Ah didn't want to force mahself on you, dear." She replied, returning to the seat of cushions as Sally sat herself on the edge of the bed.

"You have to stop with these silly notions of selflessness, Bunnie. You're always welcome – Nicole was surprised you didn't show."

"Ah needed some time on mah own. Some time to think."

"Ant told me what happened."

"Oh god…" the rabbit buried her head in her arms, shaking it and sighing. "Ah'm sorry…ah just…it wasn't fair on him hun."

"What wasn't?"

"Look at me!" Bunnie near-snapped. "Ah'm less than Mobian! Ant deserves someone special, not someone…mutated."

Sally shook her head, smirking comically. "Bunnie, sometimes I do wonder why Antoine chose you – you have these moments when you can be remarkably dense."

"Ya don't need to rub it in." she replied, looking away from the insult.

"You keep saying he should be with someone special – wasn't he the one who asked you to be with him?"

Bunnie stayed silent, not looking towards Sally.

"He saw the botched roboticization, and stayed loyal to you even then. If he didn't want to be with you, do you think he would have asked me to come and talk to you?"

"Ah…he _asked_ you?" she glanced her way.

"Yea, when he called us up about the fighting, he asked me to see you – he didn't want to be without you in this."

"It's sweet of him but- fighting? Wha- oh god!" Bunnie was shaking visibly now, struggling to work out what exactly was happening.

"Rebel soldiers attacked Mobotropolis yesterday. The other freedom fighters are there, helping out. I stayed to talk to you. Antoine really didn't want to start without you. He said he wouldn't be at his best without you."

"What am I doing to him…ah've only made things worse…" she collapsed again.

"Then make it better."

"How?"

"I'm going to Mobotropolis to help with the fighting. Rotor's staying here to defend Knothole with Nicole. Come with me, find Antoine, and make things up with him. Crying here isn't going to change things." Sally offered her hand.

* * *

Lupin walked alone through the streets of Mobotropolis. He had taken a break from the fighting to check up on the city, ensure no insurgent forces were inside and make sure there weren't any riots or the like that could disrupt the defence. He slowly saw the attitudes change around him as he walked, the people on the street sides turning less and less friendly as he passed. Wolves weren't very welcome in society in any case – they were seen as too feral, untamed. Foxes, yes, not wolves. Eventually he turned off the beaten track and through a small alley covered by a stone construction, and finally found what he was looking for.

His path was blocked by thugs. Four of them, and he smelt another three moving in behind him as he closed the distance, walking towards them with confidence at a slow, measured pace, his cloak fluttering at his heels until he stopped, only a few feet from the dark mass of bats and other blunt objects.

"You hate me – I can smell it." He told them. "Do you want me to kill you now, or later?"

"mongrel's got claws." One of them jeered, waving his weapon, a crude slug-thrower pistol, in Lupin's direction.

The wolf waited a few more seconds, held against a few more insults, before he lunged. Powerful legs launched him from the floor in a pounce, carrying him over the loud crack of the gunshot, and into the firer. His claws, bared and lethal without gloves, fastened around his target's shoulders as a powerful jaw clamped down on his target's neck. As he crushed it he heard the spine snap and blood filled his mouth – he released, spitting the blood out. He wasn't a fan of drinking Mobian blood, he wasn't a vampire bat. Conscious of the others, he jumped forward off the corpse, carrying him behind them and back onto concrete flooring.

Straightening and turning in one fluid motion he met the other six as they bore down on him, flailing weaponry. Unfortunately for them, the alley was narrow, and they lost the number advantage as he forced them into him one by one.

The first came down with a bat, swinging it wildly over his head whooping a strange battle cry.

With one hand Lupin dug into the bat, and with the other clawed his opponent's throat out, tossing corpse and weapon aside in a single ergonomic motion.

The third and fourth had less original knives, and one managed to make contact, drawing a thin, angry red line down his forearm and as the blood trickled out the cause received a punch that broke his ribs and crushed his heart. The other was tossed aside with a flick of the wrist, bouncing off the wall with a sickening crack.

With the first four of their comrades slaughtered in such a short amount of time, the rest turned and fled the scene. Lupin watched them go, blood shining on his claws and matting his fur. He sat and cleaned himself a little before accessing his communicator.

"Tails?" he growled, the adrenalin still cooling in his system.

"This is him. What have you found Lupin?"

"We're in more trouble than we thought. Some of the gangers in the city are already tipping in favour of the enemy. I hope you and your royalty friends have something up your collective sleeve."

"I don't suppose you want to tell me how you found this out?"

"I went looking for them. Eventually someone was going to take a pot-shot at a wolf, and if it's the one from the freedom fighters, it's sure as hell going to be someone who wants to limit what Antoine can do." He kicked half-heartedly at one of the corpses. Fighting was what he was good at.  
"I thought you had given up looking for something to kill. You're not doing us any favours." Tails was angry already, he could hear him from down the link. He didn't like Lupin going after people, denying with the utmost vehemence that he had ever done so himself.

"I gave up on looking for everyone to kill. These ones could have ended up being a pain for us, and I just sorted them out."

"Well stop it – the Minister of Citizenry is trying to sort out a plan that should get the private contractors on our side. I don't want you sprinting around the underworld killing off half our informants."

"Whatever." He replied, concomitantly. He liked his independence, not having Tails oppose limits on him.

"Get back to the walls, help out Retis and Telera. Now." Tails didn't sound like he was in for an argument. He was giving an order, and he wasn't about to be refused.

* * *

Geoffrey drove into the Nightmare Legion war camp to a violent cheer from the soldiers. Their whole reason, whole point in fighting, had just joined them to lead the charge.

As the buggy slewed to a halt, churning up wet mud and spraying it liberally around, Geoffrey smiled to anyone watching. Switching off the engine and yanking the key from the switch, he clambered from the thin chassis onto the muddy ground as the commander strode through the crowd to meet him.

"Turk, I heard of the report on the way."

"It is of no worry-"

"I did not say I was disappointed, general. No, I know of what the walls of Mobotropolis can withstand. I did not expect the gates to fall straight away. This first day was to test their defences, for your men to get a feel for what they are fighting. We have a little time to breach the gates, do not concern yourself with it."

Turk relaxed slightly. He was still by no means at ease – the skunk could be putting on a false air in front of the soldiers, to scold him for his failure later. The words had done little to reassure him as of yet, but they were something. "We have caused some damage to the levels of the walls, some casualties…the assault was not fruitless. The problem will be approaching the gates. The automated gun-towers are impossible to get close to, and they are active all day and night. I have stood in their shadow before, and I know what they can do to a robotic legion."

"Do not concern yourself with that, good sir. Come, we will discuss in private." Geoffrey led Turk away through the throng of soldiers and into one of the old buildings, rebuilt, reinforced and turned into the command centre, to explain his plan. The three of them – Geoffrey, Turk and his aide, lowered themselves into the metal and plastic chairs around the metal table bolted to the floor.

"An assault on the gate will not work, especially with our numbers, correct?" Geoffrey began, Turk nodding in understanding. "I do not propose your soldiers even touching the gun towers. They will not need to. I may not be a military man, Turk, but I know something of strategy, cat's paws, rats in the system, no offence, Myro." the aide nodded his indifference.

"I am not particularly fond of my species either." He said simply.

"Anyway, before we showed our hand, I had prepared us with a little surprise. Within the city are gangsters, citizens, splinter cells ready to respond to my commands. First we will whittle away some of their forces at the wall. Then I will give the order, my insurgent forces will rise from within to cripple the tower control systems and power supply. As we strike at the walls, the gun towers will fall silent. Then the gates will be vulnerable. Wait…" he waved down Turk's interruption. "The gates will be far from defenceless, I know. There will still be soldiers defending it, but they are beatable with what we have. We can fight them where we couldn't fight the turrets."

"I like your style." Turk nodded, his beak clacking in happiness.

"Now there is the matter of Knothole." Geoffrey digressed. "What are the plans for that little nutshell?"

"Well." The falcon leaned forward, glad to be on a subject he was sure about. "As you well know, we could not spare any of our standard forces for Knothole, or we would risk undermining our own efforts at Mobotropolis. In the end, we decided to look at what we could do with Angel Island."

"You contacted the Echidna? You must be mad!" Geoffrey rose quickly, glaring down at his general.

"Sit back down. We didn't go anywhere near the Echidna. No, we went west. After a little searching we managed to get ourselves into an audience with Ironhive, one of the beehives. Their current leader is ambitious, and we managed to get him to grant us a couple of drone battalions for an assault on Knothole. With any luck, they won't see it coming. If anything, they will be expecting us, not bee drones, striking from the skies."

Placated and ecstatic, Geoffrey grinned at his general wildly. "I am going to enjoy this dearly."


	6. Command Bunker iii

A fretful whining in his ear alerted Antoine to the start of the day's shelling. He answered the call and rose from sleeping on his weapon. "Report?"

"Well, shelling has started. Thought you would want to know." The voice from down the comm was unrecognisable, but whoever it was would be on the upper tier. They were the first to see the shells rocket skyward on their arc over the walls. Shaking off the night lethargy and fatigue he stood in the early morning gold and looked out over the jungle. The artillery was far off – fighting wouldn't begin for a few hours yet. This was just causing fires, hoping to kill off a few more people and draw soldiers away from the walls. They never targeted the walls themselves, they would have to come in range of the guns to do so, and that would mean losing artillery.

He watched the burst and ignition of the rockets as they exited the barrels to arc skyward, then shook off the momentary distraction and flicked on his comm-link.

"Wake tze watch crews. Tze fighting will not begin for a while yet, but when it does, I want to know the moment tze bullets begin to fly. Comprend?"

"Yes sir." The soldier left the link, but Antoine could hear him begin to shout orders as fast as the shells were coming, to wake the necessary troops as an early warning system.

The coyote sat back down, disassembling and reassembling his Voltage rifle, inventorying his gear, anything to keep his mind off Bunnie. He couldn't afford to think of her now, not if he wanted to stay sane.

* * *

Sonic woke later than Antoine, having fallen asleep against the seat of one of the fire engines, to be now roused by the owner, wanting his engine back.

"Come on hedgehog, we've got more fires to fight." Sonic stared down, eyes half open, at the hare in the bright green suit trying to usher him out of the front of the vehicle.

"Come on, five more minutes!" he whined and turned over, away from this irritation. Then his comm beeped. "What is it?" he complained into it.

"It's Tails. Get up to the palace, now, Sonic. We need you to say some stuff into a microphone."

It was by far the strangest thing Tails had ever asked him to do. He'd asked him to run with experiments strapped to his back, to test the strength of Insert Gadget Here, he'd even asked him for advice on girls. He was asking him to talk this time. "Whad'ya need me to say, bud?"

"We need to win over the people, so if we get some footage of you and a little enthusiasm, it's to tip their minds in our favour. We don't want little cults to the separatists rising up around the city."

Sonic's ears and nose twitched experimentally, the acrid taste of smoke and smell and sound of things burning drifted through his senses. His first thought was to disregard it, another bomb strike. _But there had been no detonation._

"Crap…I think it's already started Tails. Hold on, I gotta deal with this."

"Can't you let the police deal with it?"

"You trust them to sort this out?"

"No, I just don't trust _you_ to sort this out." Tails replied, droll.

"You worry too much. Back in a flash!" Sonic slid out of the drive compartment, sprinting off down the road as his speed flashed up on the scale in moments, ash and dust kicked up from the rode as he ran, disappearing in a steadily expanding cloud of black dust.

Curling into a spindash, he drifted round a corner, chaos energy sparking around him as it fought to stop the speed ripping his skin off and leaving it on the road behind him. Out of the turn he hopped, back on his feet, spying the cloying cloud of smoke rising from yet another alleyway.

He turned his sprint into a jump, firing off the tarmac into the wall, bouncing off into the alley, taking it all in faster than the normal eye can follow.

About four young Mobians, holding various firelights, jerry cans and other flammable objects, throwing them animatedly at a fire built against the side of a wall. The wall itself, made from a combination of paste and brick, was beginning to bubble worryingly as Sonic joined the fray. Bits of plaster flaked off in the heat, melting and adhering to the tarmac as a thick, viscous fluid.

The first clue the vandals had that Sonic was there was when one of them felt him bounce of his back. The shock of impact was so he was unconscious before he hit the floor. Not dead – Sonic had been careful not to harden his spines, he wasn't looking to kill them, just take them out of action.

The ricochet from the strike carried Sonic onto another, so two were lying face-down before the blue hedgehog came to a stop, bouncing off the back of the second, up and back down in a steep arc. He could stop on a dime.

"Put the bottle down, pipsqueaks, and maybe I won't have to put you out like your friends." He articulated to the remaining two. One of them, very foolishly, took the moment of pause to throw a Molotov at the hedgehog who had just K.O'd two of his mates. Little more than a bottle of beer and a lit piece of paper, it shattered off the single-ring shield that burst up, the bottle fragmenting and snuffing out the flame before it could light. "Now now…" Sonic shook his head at them, smirking, "…That ain't going to get you anywhere. Come on, the authorities might be a bit nicer if you come in now, I'm sure you don't need reminding how fast I am."

As things played out, they turned and ran straight into the waiting arms of the MPD. Three Enforcers, having seen Sonic dart into the alleyway, had moved to the other side to prevent anyone trying to make a break for it. They didn't even need to use the truncheons – when the two adolescents saw the odds, they broke down, practically falling into their hands as Sonic snuffed the fire by forcing it into a fire-shield, then retrieving the two unconscious youths and dragging them out into the light, handing them over to the officers with a sigh and a word.

"Boring." He stated, leaving them to clean the place off as he spun on the spot, sprinting back towards the palace. The riot-fires and property damage was going to become commonplace in Mobotropolis if everything kept up as it was, and only a day or so into the actual battle…this was the first fire he had seen started by people in the city, the rest had been through virtue of artillery strikes. There were probably others, the city was a large place, and Sonic wasn't always the first for everything…just most things.

He skidded out onto one of the key roads that led from the gates half-way to the palace, and spent a few minutes dodging traffic and two hundred miles per hour, before speeding off onto smaller roads and avenues. The gate roads never led straight to the palace, precisely so in the case of invasion it would be harder for ground forces to reach that key objective. Sonic threw himself into a flurry of short dashes, punctuated constantly by short, sharp turns and twists, as he battled his way to the palace.

He skidded to a halt at the gates, the guards glancing at each other at his approach then near-throwing the gates open when he stopped, and he took yet another look at the Palace of Acorns. The mighty construct, rising a kilometre into the sky, a giant morass of towers, walkways and various other buildings, the whole thing was enclosed in a powerful shield generator, the emitters built into the surrounding wall and the generator, a synthetic chaos emerald courtesy of MilesCorp, far down in the sub-basement. Combined with the advanced security system and full complement of guards, it was a tough nut to crack. Sonic really hated it. He harboured an intense irritation for the king, Max's attempts to remove Sally from the monarchy because she was with him…the thought made him pause. Sally. The king despised Sonic because he said he was impetuous, ignorant in the extreme with no grasp of politics. Was that what Sally was now thinking? Yes, he didn't know politics, but he had always been going to leave that to her, ignorant and impetuous…he didn't think so, but how could you tell? If you were ignorant, you would be ignorant of your own ignorance…so it took someone looking at you, hearing and seeing you every day to tell you…shit. He was. Sally had been telling him the entire time. He swore vehemently, drawing the attention of the guards as he inwardly chided himself for lack of – well, brains. Even better, he probably didn't know what to say to try and convince Sally he had worked it out…he had said it all before!

Tossing with this new conundrum, he began his steady jog to the top of the palace, passing guards and sentries in rushes of colour. He slowed to a stop outside a large wooden door, the carving on it depicting the burying of the hatchet, the symbol of negotiation. His chaos sense was giving off multiple vibrations, some chaos and some normal…Tails was in there, and probably the king, too. Tipping open the door with one hand, he let his left eye survey the room. They were all looking at him…so embarrassing. Probably heard him coming, the sounds of a supersonic hedgehog running down a corridor is never the most discrete, he reflected, and opened the door fully. Alicia was watching him with unbound interest – it dawned on him that they had in fact never met. He had seen her once from a distance, it was bound to happen, he was dating her daughter after all, but they had never seen each other properly let alone talk.

There was a moment of awkwardness, with everyone staring at the blue hedgehog in their midst, before Tails gave him a slight, friendly wave, beckoning him over to the empty seat next to him.

"So, you're Sonic the hedgehog?" Alicia began, and Sonic was momentarily stunned. The voice was soft, yet powerful, quite like Sally – must have been where she got it.

"Yea, that's me."

"My daughter speaks well of you. If she does not speak in exaggerated terms, I do not think we can hope for a better suitor."

Sonic then decided now was not the best time to mention the frequent arguments that had erupted between them recently. "I don't think Max shares your optimism, ma'am." Playing it safe, neutral; keep the conversation away from his relationship.

"He sees himself as the only fit ruler for the kingdom. Do not mind him, unlike myself, his age has only served to compound it. It is not his choice alone who succeeds him, it falls to myself and my offspring also, and you have no need to worry." She knew exactly what to say – she was far more of a linguist than the king.

"Once gain I thank you for the hope, but if I'm gonna be straight with you, I'm really not sure about running the kingdom myself."

"Sorry to interrupt, but can we save the problem of succession until after they stop throwing rockets at us?" Tails cut in before Alicia could reply. "We didn't call Sonic here to discuss how things are going. I'm sure I can provide a far more detailed explanation later, if needs be."

"I- yes, of course." Alicia deferred to Tails.

"Sonic, you've probably spent your time fighting the fires, yes? Well, we can expect those not to abate any time soon, with the constant shelling. I'm not sure how much ammunition our separatist enemies have in stock, but I can assume they are not prepared for a long siege. They don't have the numbers, so whatever they are planning is going to involve them getting inside the city sometime during the fighting, and it will be soon. As we all know, the faster a war ends, the less men die in the fighting."

"I fail to see why I'm here." Sonic said during the pause.

"Because we need to make sure they can't get in. You've all seen the walls, the defences available. Even with this constant bombardment, do you really think they could breach those defences? Not from the outside. Whatever they do will come from inside the city, from some quarter. We already have motions in place to prevent the loss of our private defence contractors, thanks to our Minister of Citizenry, but our largest problem is that of the actual citizens. We can't buy all of them."

"Which is how we came to you, Sonic." Alicia took up the baton, "You have already saved the world twice, once on Angel Island, a second time in the skies over Knothole. The Mobians of Mobius have come to revere you as a hero, like it or not, and we can use that. If you are well known to be supporting us, public opinion will shift. Less will support the activists, more will support us, the less we will have to worry about public uprising."

"So…what you're saying is…you want me to show off?" Sonic's interest had peaked, and he was enjoying this more and more.

"Succinctly put. Shout of your catchphrases, make a big deal of things, be melodramatic." Tails elaborated, "Come on Sonic, we're giving you a chance to get in people's faces."

"Sounds like a done deal already, but won't I just annoy them? I'm already on the edge of being kicked out of the snowboarding competitions for being a chaos adept."

"Except this time you're helping them out, not competing against them. Sonic, I'm not exactly photogenic, I don't do this sort of stuff, and the rest of us aren't known for the saving the world lark, and if we can get Sally into the game as well, the world's fastest and the princess, side by side? Think about what people get from that."

Tails' voice dropped low, so only Sonic could hear. "And it might help you and Sally sort out the problems going on."

* * *

And so, three hours after the shelling began, so did the fighting. Just as before there was no sign of attack from the treeline until fire began to crack off the wall, and the defenders ducked and countered as they could.

Hartley fought all the harder, knowing that with the new promotion also came the responsibility and standards to uphold.

"You two!" he shouted to two members of his squad as they moved past, "find yourself a rocket launcher and eliminate the Hydra tanksss harassing us!"

A stroke of bad luck had made a squadron of enemy Hydra demolisher tanks move into his defence zone, and on the first level, things were taking a pounding. This level was where soldiers died, whilst other groups up on the higher levels took pot-shots at anything they could see. On level 1 it was the common soldiery, weapons raised in defiance to fend off the warriors emerging from the jungle – almost. The opposition seemed content at the treeline, most of the time, never moving forward to the walls. It was a stalemate when one side should be winning. That had to be changed.

Rising to standing, Retaliation rifle ready to fire – he hadn't had time to be equipped with anything better – and pulled off a couple of shots at targets that had made the mistake of standing just a little too far forward. He saw one clear headshot, the bullet puncturing the skull and exiting through the back. The second shot missed by a mark, smacking into the second target's shoulder, drawing blood and dropping him to the ground. Both were out of the fight as Hartley dropped out of the firing line, though only one would definitely not come back.

The soldier next to him thudded loudly against the concrete flagstones, two holes puncturing the chest, and a small trickle of blood began to worm its way through the cracks – another friend gone. It was emotionally crippling each time, but he couldn't afford to let himself grieve just yet, that would come later. He was a salamander, cold-blooded, branded a killer by natural selection. While his peculiar heritage gave him more 'warmth' than other reptilians, he still found himself able to call on this darker side, to descend into the role of a killer.  
He rose again as fire abated, snapping off shots like a trained sniper, and another two went down, both head shots, before he was forced to take cover once again, firing raking the level. He was earning quite a reputation amongst enemy soldiers, he noticed.

A third time he rose, clicking off more shots, this time they saw him. A bullet scored his cheek, biting off a thin layer of scales and allowing a dribble of thin, watery blood to well up before he could take cover again. Another kill confirmed and another two wounded at least. From down the line he heard the whoosh of ignition as a rocket slashed from a recoilless launcher and streaked into the enemy ranks. Risking a moment over the top, he was allowed the pleasure of seeing it impact on the outside of one of the Hydra tanks, punching through the armour and detonating within. Hartley joined in the brief cheer, extended as a moment later another rocket burst from a different launcher, from above, detonating spectacularly in the track section of the tubular tank and listing it sideways. Buoyed by this string of victory, Hartley unclipped an EMP grenade from his belt, rose and tossed it with all his strength. Two seconds after he let go, the target tracker kicked in, then the manoeuvring thrusters, though he could not watch as it twisted mid-flight, homing in on a third Hydra. He heard the detonation of the EMP grenade then ignition of the ammunition stores, safety procedures within the loading system cooked by the grenade, and then the tank itself lit up like a bomb.

This unexpected turn of events became a retreat, the remaining tanks wheeling and tracking off into the jungle as the infantry fought a rear-guard, pursued by all manner of gunfire. It marked no end to the fighting, but it was done there, for now, until tomorrow.

* * *

One level up and about half a mile along, battle was still waged between the two factions, separatist and loyalist. The separatists had begun bringing up jetpacks, closing on the walls with blades and claws. Birds took flight as well, natural wings giving them their own lift.

As the aerial combatants closed the distance, Antoine switched to his blade, a well-balanced sabre he had honed his skills with for many years, flicking his Love handgun off his belt just for a little added bonus. The entire clip was HS rounds, giving him an edge against anyone to face him.  
The first to actively try to engage the Mobian commander, a bird, squawking a battle cry, was silenced as an HS round pumped its way through his chest, the high-speed rounds punching a hole through both the armour plating and flesh. He dropped like a stone, momentum carrying him forward to bounce sickeningly off the grey concrete wall.

His companion used this momentary distraction to dive in through the firing port and onto the flagstones, his weapons, a common sabre and serrated knife held in a defensive stance. He was out of his league – Antoine was a master with the blade. He waited for his masked foe to move first, and they did so, impatient, and dove forward, bringing the blade up over their head as the knife was held back in a block. Antoine sidestepped, slicing out with his sword in a close-cut strike, slicing open their side as they stumbled past, and as he turned he completed the move, shifting his grip and burying his blade in between the wings. They spasmed slightly as the Mobian died, and then he fell to the floor as the Mobian general spun to combat fresh opponents as they dove in at him. Two more tried to silence him, but his blade granted them death's blessing, and his sword arm would not tire from such quick kills.

A fourth target landed, wielding a more eccentric vibro-scythe. The weapon vibrated so fast it looked still, but could cut through most common metals and non-metals. Antoine's blade was very much just another bit of metal. The general began a series of dodges, backing slowly away as his opponent advanced with the scythe spinning in a rough figure of eight, forcing the swordsman down the battlements. He couldn't get a strike in without his sword coming apart in his hands, sliced apart by the vibrating scythe, and he was fast running out of options. The other was a fraction too close for use of pistols, the time taken to draw would mean he would be upon Antoine.

Abruptly the scythe-wielder pulled up short, the blade stopping mid-spin, the man's eyes fixed on him. Their eyes met, and Antoine saw nothing short of terror, plain terror, at the pause. It took the coyote a moment to realise what, in fact, had occurred.

Clamped around the shaft of the scythe, just short of the blade, was the hand of a particularly carefully crafted bionic limb. The arm twisted, a motion a hand of flesh and blood could not replicate, and the pole was snapped cleanly in half with an echoing clang and a short flurry of multi-coloured sparks. For a moment the hand disappeared, dropping the broken scythe in the process, then Antoine understood.

A hand, presumably belonging to the same figure, tapped the man on the shoulder, and he turned, slowly, unable to conceal his gut-wrenching terror. The robotic hand cracked loudly across his jaw, snapping it along with the man's neck, Bunnie watching him land on the concrete with only a little remorse.

"Sorry ah'm late, sugah. Sal' and I only just got here." She offered to Antoine, as the other attempted to stifle his tears as he broke into a smile.  
"Mon Cheri! But…I thought…" he petered out, Bunnie dragging him to the ground as fire began once more to rake their position. Though they were sitting under streams of bullets in the middle of a battle, he drank in her detail again. Examining her height, clothes, limbs…the bionic arms and legs, once thick and bulky, replaced with thinner, more refined yet stronger versions shaped more in the likeness of her original organic limbs. The limbs had been modified heavily, to incorporate jet boosters, sniper weapon systems along with various other combat modes, and each one was made of Megatal. The vibro-scythe had no chance against it.

"We ain't got time for that now, dear! Case you ain't noticed yet they're shooting at ya! Shoot back!" Bunnie berated him, jokingly. Spinning her cybernetic, a twin-barrelled sniper rifle unfolded from capsules on the sides, and she rose quickly, scouter flickering up and drawing beads on targets. Shots began to lose form the weapons, the recoil dampened by kinetic bleeders within the arm itself. Emboldened by her act, Antoine snatched up his Voltage rifle, and rose with her, targets sighted slower that the rabbit's, but no less accurate. The kills began to mount, repeating the method, fire, duck, reload, rise fire, duck, reload…until the light began to wane. As predicted, the enemy troops began their multi-staged retreat, the infantry providing a rear-guard for the tanks, little pinpricks of muzzle flash, spotting the forest surely as the night sky. Once again, the day was done, but the war was newly birthed, the fighting just begun. Antoine had been saved, emotionally as well as physically, and that was a victory for him.


	7. Command Bunker iv

For the first time in his life, Sonic was doing exactly what he was told. Surprised? What if I told you he had just been told to show off to the public, by the queen? Still surprised? Didn't think so. As asked, he ran laps of the city, putting out fires whenever he caught a scent, generally foiling crime if he could, throwing off snappy remarks and embellished catchphrases.

As the night set in, the full moon bleeding light into Mobotropolis, Sonic finished the remaining day's work. Flickering street lamps cast a pall of flickering shadows on the walls, daemons entrapped within stone dancing in a vile parody of life, the last few living souls working their way through the city proper. Here and there Mobians scuttled into their homes as Sonic jogged slowly home. Tonight something was nagging at him, a shadow as fickle as those that raced through the streets, slowing him, drawing his attention away from reality.

Sally.

He could not ignore it forever, running was not an option, and it was leaving him behind, telling him to face his own problems. Every time he turned his head he could see her, lurking there in the corners of his mind. The problem hadn't reared its head until the day was over, when the distractions had run dry. He had worked it out for himself…and yet he couldn't put it into words. Tails was the one full of spinning vocabularies in the nebula everyone called a brain, Sonic was closer to a book given to teenagers on their sixteenth. Fairly articulate with lots of swears and innuendo.

As the night crawled on, Sonic became more introspective and his pace slowed accordingly, until soon he was walking. He didn't speak aloud his thoughts, as he was so wont to do so often. For anyone observing, Sonic appeared a quiet, demure character – he was troubled, and it was interfering with him.

Shadows followed his progress, some physical; others conjured of his own disjointed imaginings. They watched him as he turned corners as they appeared, oblivious to the world, turned inward. He no longer sought the palace, he didn't care where he ended up – he hadn't had a good, serious think for a while, he needed one now. Reporting to the others could wait. He wandered the labyrinthine streets, pausing every now and then, always in thought. Above and around the shadows congealed and grew, dark figures skipping from wall to wall. Sonic was capable of sensing them, so absorbed he didn't think to.

"Hedgehog!" a voice barked, and Sonic was drawn from his mind into the world once again, head twisting to the source of the voice.  
"And you are?" he replied, conversationally. He couldn't see a face, but as his fighting feel kicked in he could detect no adepts among them, no traces of chaos energy. All normal.

"Sorry to do this, hedgehog, but we can't let you go on."

"Oh great, just my luck to waltz onto gang turf." The blue hedgehog mock-pouted, winding himself back up for a run. He wasn't in the mood to fight.

"I don't think you get my meaning. You're a problem. You're getting fixed." The shadow drew a well-maintained old pistol. "Nothing personal, just business."

That did it. "Alright, if you want to play that way." Sonic told him, and fired forward as the rest of the mob drew their own crude weapons, various blunt and sharp objects, a few guns interspersed randomly.

Sonic couldn't find much in the way of resistance – they just couldn't keep up. Swiftly he stunned and knocked out opponents as others waved weaponry ineffectually in his direction and small-arms fire lit the air. The bog-standard pistols had a low rate of fire, far out by miles, completely unprepared to deal with an opponent this fast. Whoever had decided this was a good idea had either next to nothing in terms of resources, or was very, very inept as a leader.

It wasn't even a fight; his gangers dropping left and right, whoever was leading decided a retreat was in order. The few pairs and trios that had yet to be used as a trampoline by the blue buzz in their midst began to beat hasty retreats, abandoning attempts at subterfuge and stealth, sprinting away from the scene. Sonic made no move to chase them, once again he was confused.

What the hell had the point been to all that?

He hadn't killed anyone; each body was unconscious, though some had suffered light wounds from how or where they fell. The only corpse was the result of the wildfire, a stray shot managing to find a home in his chest. Sonic felt sorry for him, he hadn't done anything to harm him, he hadn't wanted to do this, it had just happened.

"But what the fuck was that about?" he wondered aloud at the unprovoked attack, they had appeared and tracked him, then tried to kill him.

"Now, now, Sonic, no need for that kind of language." He had forgotten Nicole, a silent presence within the communicator. "There is a reason for it, if you are a little blind in your mind's eye."

"And I suppose you have it?"

"Isn't it obvious? You've spent the whole day trying to win over the public. Not all of them agree with you."

"So, I achieved nothing?"

"I wouldn't say that, but not everyone is going to agree with your ideas. The others didn't spell it well, but this is just a case of softening the impact."

* * *

Moving, summoned by an unheard call, the city awoke, the moon and the night bearing silent witness to what was to unfold. Members of various gangs crawled from rents in stone, clambering through broken windows. Resources drawn from every favour, deception and blackmail, a movement rippled through the foetid depths of the underworld crews. Guided by an exterior mind, worker crews turned through coin rose from their beds, gathering up their tools and leaving abodes on silent feet. The factions met and joined with little more than terse grunts of acknowledgement and furtively whispered orders. Couples became groups, and those groups merged into taskforces. Each force had a certain objective to achieve, and were equipped accordingly.

One group, handling large sections of conductive wire, set themselves down outside a small junction box, work crews flicking on small welding torches and cutting units, their gangster bodyguards watching every possible angle. A hole was cut into the wall of the junction transformer, the insulated wiring fed into it and fused to an available emergency access port, outside the rest of the crew merging sections of the cable together, feeding it back round into a second transformer, turning the two engines into a loop, cancelling the power output. No lights died, no televisions turned off, the transformers only led to a single location. The gun towers.

Half a mile along, a second team, carrying EMP grenades of varying dubious manufacture, broke into one of the secondary generator pods, and began to lob their home-made weapons at it. It did not explode, just short out with a disappointing fizzle. The first gun tower, unable to receive main power from the grid and also deprived of its backup, switched to tertiary power, a small generator within the tower itself, deactivating sixty percent of the active turrets and leaving the active ones with only a small window of opportunity.

The process was repeated nine times, and before midnight had risen, five gun towers were inactive, and the second stage of the assault began. The worker teams fled the scenes wordlessly, the gangers remained, waiting, ten, fifteen minutes as they were joined by yet more warriors. The heavyweights, held in reserve, unfit for the stealth duty, they afforded the best weaponry and protection, bristling customised assault rifles, the occasional minigun or rocket launcher held with a fierce warrior-pride.

Moving as quietly as this heavy, clunking armour allowed, the newly-reinforced teams, cobbled together from half of the underworld gangs, weapon and drug circles, approached the gates, safe from the wrath of the gun towers, the formidable defences brought low being positioned outside the gate, to repel threats from without, not within.

Guards were dispatched through cloak & dagger, throats slit and others clubbed brainless, bodies dragged into spaces. Detection wasn't the problem, it was a clear line of fire they wanted – pools of blood didn't matter. Then, when everyone was assembled behind cover from front and behind, when rooftops were sprawling with ranged weaponry and the ground was covered in half-buried home-made trip-mines, every gun trained on the five gates, the mechanisms and weak points, all information supplied in meticulous detail beforehand.

As one, every weapon opened fire, and the flashes lit the night as bright as any thunderbolt.

Walls are meant to withstand extreme damage, to repel invades through sheer dint of resilience…from the outside. True, at first it seemed the ammunition was having no effect, tearing chunks of aesthetic from the painted metal, shearing stone gargoyles from their mounts and shattering them against the stony ground, then, in the dark, the gangs began to find their marks. Lines of fire were adjusted by fractions, the net effect building over time, fire began to pepper the right places. On one gate, a crack ran across the centre as a rocket crew, bolstered by various automatic weaponry cracked a weak spot in the building, pointed out to the nearest millimetre by their informant. On another, concentrated fire from weapons of all shapes and sizes shattered the pistons and hydraulics that powered the giant pair of gates, and one listed worryingly inwards, held back by its twin and the lucky fact that the gates extended a short distance into the walls, even when fully open.

The stories were only of varying intensity in each of the other three pairs, weapons demolishing weak points on the near-impenetrable gates. All this occurred within seconds, and predictably the flash and bang of gunfire roused the sleeping soldiers, cries from the watchmen waking yet more. Soldiers woke quickly, internal clocks adjusting them to the sudden change in pace, and weapons were in hands within moments, quick, economic motions of loading and aiming as the soldiers rose to find targets.

The two sides sighted each other, and military grade weapons began to exchange bullets with the custom gang weapons, the rounds invisible against the night pulling apart cover and armour, though rarely. Both sides were heavily dug-in, and the gangsters were not there for a long night. In ones and twos the insurgent force slipped away, the fire against the military gradually diminishing, gang members disappearing into the night, some with a cacophony of noise as they lugged away heavy weapons.

In net effect it didn't matter how many gang members the military cut down. Their purpose had been served – the gun-towers were crippled and the gates were damaged to various degrees – it was all they had to do. The added bonus of shooting down a few soldiers was really just that, a bonus.  
The last of their forces slipping away, the men who had orchestrated the attack send a message down a secure signal to the armies outside the city. Four hours before the norm, the shelling began again, and separatists forces woke to the orders of their superiors, preparing for the bunker buster of the war.

* * *

Fiona saw the army mobilise, from her position in the treeline. Fitted with a Mirror stealth suit, for two days she had been invisible, watching the enemy forces as they attacked and retreated. Alone she couldn't do anything against them – a single shot would give away a location, and she would be killed, but she had been able to monitor radio and other communication, and watch the armies coordinate. This was a new development, this early in the morning. Soldiers needed rest to fight at peak effectiveness, so whatever they had planned, the soldiers had been prepared in advance, as she could well tell, watching platoons march or jog through the camps, as others hefted ammunition crates or carted heavier ammunition for the tank units.

It warranted a closer look. She used the scope from the Judgement, using the extensive magnification lenses it allowed to give herself a more detailed analysis of the situation, without imperilling herself. As it turned out, a closer look didn't grant additional information, but she could make some guesses. Something could have happened, their location could have been discovered, forcing them to move, but it would not explain why they were arming for an attack. Something had occurred at the city, something that gave them an advantage and thus something they were eager to exploit. Well, this sort of development was exactly why she was here; to give the forces at the city some form of early warning.

"Tails?" she whispered, not daring to raise her voice, attempting to avoid detection through audio scanners.

"You found something?" the reply came back. He sounded tired, she had probably just woken him, but it was a sign of importance and trust that he had not called her on it. She had called to tell him something important, he wasn't exactly going to delay it.

"The separatists are moving. I'm watching them arm up as we speak. It's definitely an attack on the city; they're pulling out all the stops."

"So that's it…Antoine called in an hour ago. The city gate defences were attacked. The towers are on tertiary power and all five gates have suffered damage to some extent. I'll get on the line now, tell them to focus their defences there. Get back to the city, before they start moving. If they reach us before you do, there won't be a way inside."

"Got it." She trembled unconsciously at the thought of being isolated from Tails- no, the team, dammit! "Want me to drop a few mines on the way?"

"Be liberal with them if you can, we want to delay them as much as possible. Even a few seconds could make the difference. Tails out." The link went dead, and Fiona's hands went to the dozen or so concussion mines at her belt. Each was about as big as a golf ball, but Tails had made them, so you knew they would work. They had waived the use of explosive mines, to avoid the chance of forest fires.

Besides, as he had said, they only needed to delay them. Once the enemy discovered what they were wading through, they would move slower, more cautiously, to avoid similar problems, and those affected by the grenades would be thrown off too. Dropping from the tree and landing on compression boots to muffle sound, she turned and jogged into the forest, one eye on the HUD radar, watching for pursuit, the other on the ground ahead, choosing likely places to toss the little bombs. Between tree roots or into deep grass, she wasn't exactly conservative. All she needed was to convince them that there were lots of them, everywhere, and it would slow them down sufficiently. The enhancements on the suit let her reach the city only moments before the enemy army deployed. She could see the work the latest shelling had done – the gates, damaged severely already, had been pummelled in concentrated salvos, and now most lay broken and shattered in pieces, not even shadows of their former glory.

Fiona slowed as she left the treeline, tripping and hopping over the debris-littered ground, lumps of fused rock and metal ranged from the size of her fist to that of a heavy battle tank, such was the damage wrought on the de-powered gates.

The gun towers had fared better, but only marginally. The two that guarded this gate were next to demolished, massive chunks gouged from their sides as if by some giant voracious insect. The barrel of one of the larger turrets rested nearby, torn from its mounting and ripped in two by the artillery fire and impact on the ground. The guards did not see her approach, nor did they hear her, and so she entered through the gate and moved into the city with the luxury of avoiding any friendly-fire incidents.

She switched frequencies momentarily to a more general channel, and her radio exploded with sound. Orders passed back and forth down lines, she heard Antoine as he coordinated his new defence with Retis and someone named Hartley, whose name kept surfacing. Tails was not on the line, Fiona realised, his voice did not join the ranks of soldiers all attempting to make themselves heard – he must be on a more private, secure line, one that linked him only to those he really needed to hear. She felt a quick rush of envy as she realised that he had not told her this little extra. Even though she had one that linked him directly to her and her alone, she still felt jealous…for some reason.

She switched back to the secure line. "I'm back, sounds like things are getting hot around here."

"You could say that. Ant managed to reorganise as efficiently as I ever thought possible, considering what he had to work with, and he's moving his men into a more stable defence."

"Aren't you going to help?"

"As much as I would love to, I'm enjoying the politics up here. No, Sonic, Telera, Retis, Amy and Lupin are all going to be in the defence, though I'm not sure about Sonic really. I want to sort his and Sally's problems out before I let either of them loose on anyone."

"What about me?"

"Your call. If you want to give me a hand up here, or join the fighting at the walls. We could probably use help either way." Tails was noncommittal, he really didn't mind what Fiona did at that point.

"The walls I basically do what's written on the tin, but what about if I come to you? How can I actually help up there?"

"Well, besides the fact you seem…adept…at sorting out Sally and Sonic's problems, it would be kind of nice to be alongside someone who can keep up with me, and lend their support. I know what you're going to say…but Amy just really follows what she's told, little more."

"I'm no politician." She explained.

"Go to the wall then; like I said, it's your call. I'm not seeing why it's such a hard decision to make."

"Because…" Fiona paused, searching for an explanation. "Never mind. I'll join you guys at the palace."

"See you there then." Then Tails was gone. Fiona was sad, and she couldn't work out why. She had to talk to him about it sometime, when things were less turbulent, when she could do so without interruption.

She didn't deactivate the Mirror shield until she was within the palace, passing through corridors, and the cloak came down in an empty corridor at her command, and as she rounded the next corner and passed on of the servants, he waved to her as if she had been there all along. She waved back as a passing gesture, both beings continuing on their separate ways.

"Tails, I'm back, where do you want me?"

"Do you mind doing something strictly in confidence?"

Her heart rose for a moment. "Yes?"

It returned to normal as she heard what he wanted her to do. "The gates were crippled by attacks from the inside, the gun towers too. Someone who has very high levels of clearance is one of the enemy, and we need to find out who. Now, the monarchy won't let me into their systems. You think you could use your skill to do a bit of housecleaning? Find the employee list for the palace; see who's here and who isn't. Anyone who isn't, find out where they are. Get to me when you know who you can't account for."

"Wouldn't you be faster at it?"

"I can't exactly excuse myself from the conference room. I'm having Nicole synthesize my voice and interpret my thought patterns as words. You're not actually hearing me, but Nicole is very good at this, and I'm not enjoying the multi-tasking. I think I'm beginning to lisp."

"Sorry. Ok, I'll do some digging. I'll come to your room in the evening if I find anything."

"Wait- and if anyone sees you?"

"Tell them we're an item. Most of the palace don't know you're with Amy, and if any of the others see us we can tell them, or just say you wanted help with some tech and I offered to help."

"You really _do_ cover all your bases. See you later." Once again, he was gone, and Fiona felt like she could collapse. Not only had she just arranged a date with Tails, she had been able to make it private, and even cooler, _he didn't know about it._ He thought they were just meeting, but it had been the first time they had ever been properly alone.

For a moment she pictured turning up at his door in teenage clothes and holding a bottle of cheap wine, one of those half-funny half-thoughts that so often plagues us all, then she pulled herself back into reality.

"Nicole, I don't suppose you have schematics for the castle?"

"Right here. I take it you want access to a security terminal?"

"Yea- hold on, can't you access the castle system yourself?"

"I'm a sophisticated computer programme, but I still have my limits. Rotor has me running patrols with my robot units, and I'm coordinating all of you. Working so much at this distance is taxing enough to mean I can't do everything all the time. Listen, if you can break into the computer and find the list of employees, I can narrow it down to the people you need to talk to."

Continuing her walk from where she left off, a mini map appearing on her display, she began to take the route, lower into the castle, the halls changing dramatically from deep red carpets and master-crafted upholstery to more Spartan corridors, where the servants spent their time. It wasn't exactly poorer, but it lacked the embellishment and work done on the upper floors.

She began to be given looks from the passer workers – she was out of her place. Anyone who wasn't employed at the castle didn't venture into the servant quarters, and she was quite clearly, by virtue of her armour and posture, not one of the employees. As soon as she was alone again, she flicked on the Mirror shield and melted into the background again. Transparency would make it easier to navigate the hardwood corridors that trickled a steady flow of servants and other household workers.

The service panel was an ugly piece of machinery, basically a keyboard and monitor it looked like someone had glued to the wall – a piece of technology that evidently neither Tails nor Rotor had been allowed to make. The primitive quality of it showed openly. Walking quietly up to it and hoping no-one would want to use it anytime soon, Fiona got to work, using her knowledge to pass through the fortunately basic security into the employee database.


	8. Secondary Objective i

The rush of blood and adrenalin that always came with field command, the feel it gave, even if you army was all controlled by a box in a base. Rotor gave thanks to his strong heart, not having to worry about heart attacks. It wouldn't be a great development if he carked it in the middle of battle.  
Alongside the Localised Knothole Defence, of LKD, Nicole's Legionnaires were putting up the best defence they could offer for Knothole.

The LKD were formerly a militia, hurriedly conscripted when knothole had found itself outnumbered in the face of Robotnik's legions, while the proper military were already stretched to limit dealing with his other forces. Since then the LKD had been formalised, it was now just the Knothole defence force, drawn only from Knothole's inhabitants under a volunteer or minimum conscription policy to prevent being undermanned, the LKD was specifically for Knothole, nowhere else. Since the LKD also had no formal general, the forces deferred to the local freedom fighter, and Rotor was officially registered…They still maintained a rigid chain of command, something essential to any good fighting force, but they all knew that they would serve under any one of a number of generals, and they adapted to suit them.

"Patrol's looking clear so far, usual woodland, usual creatures…are you sure they're going to attack?" Nicole's voice sounded from the mouth of the hard-light construct she was using to appear here as well as there.

"No, I'm not, but logically they would. This is the only real strongpoint we have in the kingdom, and it would be quite foolish for them not to direct something our way."

"We don't know if they have the capability to. You're presuming they are prepared for a fight on multiple fronts. I can, but I know for a fact that not many organics are capable of that sort of tasking." Nicole argued back.

"I realise it's taxing for your CPU, but we have the LKD and I don't want to be caught flat-footed if the decide to attack. Until we get the all-clear from Knothole, we're staying on defensive alert." Rotor hefted the Bushido railgun experimentally. It was the only weapon he felt comfortable using, it reflected his personality: big, technical and things had a habit of getting out of the way.

A slight movement in his eye made him turn, and he raised one eyebrow as the soldier walked up to him, wearing the dark blue and green fatigues worn by the LKD.

"Looks calm out there, doesn't it?" the man remarked.

"I hope it doesn't deceive you. We don't know what the enemy is." Rotor told him pointedly.

"We still don't-" Nicole attempted to reiterate, Rotor waving down her objection with one hand.

"Then reassure me and keep checking the radar."

The lynx was quiet for a moment, then looked up at him. "This is the point you would usually say that you told me so, but please, don't."

"You're slacking, girl. How many?" he allowed himself a grin at once again being proven right while simultaneously proving the AI wrong.

"More are appearing…a few hundred, moving in concert with each other. They look organised to say the least, and I'm redirecting the nearest scout group to get a look at them. Whoever it is, they 're moving fast, and know how to maintain cohesion."

"Is that out of the ordinary?" Rotor grunted.

"Well, unless they can also phase through trees, we should expect them from the air. No-one can maintain the sort of coherency I'm seeing without there being multiple minor jumps as they move around obstacles."

That was all Rotor needed. Checking the ammunition holster in his railgun, he began barking orders into the earpiece. "Eyes skyward! They're coming at us from above the trees, recalibrate weaponry as necessary, I want shelters up now!" he looked back at the lynx. "How long have we got?"

"Four minutes, if my logic engines are still working properly."

"That's enough. The LKD can reorganise given that time, and I assume your forces are doing so as well?"

Nicole nodded, a smile gracing her form. "I'm moving Imperators to rooftops to allow for a better view, and tightening the patrol routes on the Onslaughts to a focussed area around Knothole, so we still have some warning in case of a pincer or flank attempt. The Templars are going to be alongside the LKD, to give them some sort of moving cover, and the Sunder units have been position to defend key areas of the city. The Sunder is a city robot, the flamers aren't great until whoever it is gets close to us."

Rotor grunted again – he didn't like confirming Nicole's excellence, at least, not in front of her. It was one of his vices he was content with. "How much control do you have, considering the battle in Mobotropolis?"

"I'm not sure. I'm only providing communications as far as it goes there, I'm not losing too much sleep over it, but…No, it's not quite confirmed. It will depend on who we are facing and thus how good they are at being killed."

"My second is an ever-so-slightly sadistic AI with complete command over Knothole…this explains that feeling of dread." The walrus sighed heavily, looking away from Nicole and down out of the small prefabricated bunker. He could see the citizens, rushing to their homes after the military alert was declared, and between them soldiers were in action, ferrying various items or shepherding civilians into homes. Less frequently a robot from Nicole's regiment stomped by, paying little heed to whoever was in the way, passing by without stopping or hesitating. Mindless.

"You're worrying too much. Don't fret – I'm not using clouds of neurotoxin, I'm using highly sophisticated and tested robotic servants. They are designed to kill, and so am I. Did you never go over my combat protocols?"

"I assumed Tails had worked out the kinks."

"Dear Miles was very thorough. To my knowledge there are no flaws in my system – in fact he improved the efficiency." Nicole delivered the report in the most unconcerned voice, something that disconcerted Rotor significantly.

"He told you to kill…your programming is to defend Knothole-"

"-and through any means necessary." The hard light hologram patted Rotor on the shoulder. "Do not concern yourself, I will defend Knothole with whatever resources within my disposal."

The implications of that turn of phrase made Rotor shudder violently at what could occur. Tails would be getting an earful on his return, he decided, on how to properly programme AI parameters. That or he would be making the necessary changes himself. This Nicole was too…ruthless. In a moment of inspiration he tore off his scouter and earpiece, and the lynx pivoted expertly to face him.

"I'm not resources at your disposal." He explained, stomping out of the bunker and leaving the AI alone there. Leaning casually against the wall, a habit she had effected, a part of her mind shuffled her legions like pieces on the board. She glanced down at her darkish brown fur, and watched it flash through all the colours of the spectrum, and she giggled slightly at the sight. "What are you idiots trying to do? This is funny and all, but I'm already distracted enough as it is." Her hand twitched, an emergency subroutine clicking and rippling throughout her programming, and the two hackers at the wireless substation jerked backward violently as Nicole cracked into their neural implants. Both of them sagged in the seats, as the half a dozen soldiers assigned to guard them cracked guns into position.

One hacker, his implants not sophisticated enough to allow much, felt a moment of pure agony and then a liquid pop, the steel and copper wiring melting his brain in moments. The second, housing a series of mini-processors and data-cubes, found a more lasting use. The ragdoll placed his hands on the console, standing on shaky legs.

"It…didn't work. I'm going to try again. A different network…" the puppet mumbled mindlessly, the soldiers relaxing their weapons a fraction. One of them had the presence of mind to nudge the other one with the long barrel of his gun.

"Don't bother, backfeed into his implants, killed him, I felt it. I have defences in place, I got out easier. He just didn't cut it."

The man backed away quickly, the soldiers' guns returning to a more rested position with each reassurance. Nicole, from Knothole and through the puppet controlled by his neural enhancements, was driving this half-life, using his computer placation software on the organics, using it to produce pheromones, making the soldiers lower the guard. The alias' tech was detecting various discrete neural aiming implants – good.

She directed him to sit back down, and with his arms started adjusting dials and editing commands on the keyboard. Searching around on the floor through organic eyes, Nicole located the man's manual jack, and plugged it back in from where it had come loose, and once again she was in the virtual realm, but it was not her own. It was more uniform, simply programmed with standard military issue defence programmes.

Once again she examined herself, tutting self-critically, unarmoured and still in that purple dress that she always wore. A flick of her fingers and it all changed. The dress disappeared, breaking up and orbiting her in the world of blue and black, her fingers flicking out, changing bits here and there, the programming for the dress reforming into something a little more combat-efficient.

The first item in question was an onyx chestplate, clasps fitting in around her stomach, ten inches wide, then rising slowly, following the contours of her body and rising over her bust, finishing around the neck, white ambient light emanating from the stomach line, down the centre of her front and back, a series of lines rising out and up along the line around the shoulder blades.

A thin black cable descended from the low centre in the back of the chestplate, connecting to a pair of shorts that began just before her hips and finished around the knee, lines linking the top and the bottom and a complicated design showing on the kneecap itself.

Next a pair of solid black boots, devoid of the ambient activation lines and with hover programming built into the soles. Next to it was housed the programming for wing-units, holo-board and data-skates.

Finally a pair of simple bracelets, not designed for defence but for storage, and each held programming for byte-blades and data-launchers. They ran from the bottom of her elbow to her wrist, a white band around each tip and a single line on the outer edge linking them. Altogether a very elegant design, she thought proudly, a long-handled scythe flickering through the programming in her gauntlets and rising into a free hand.

The defensive programmes, nothing more than virtual cubes fitted with simple data launchers and cycle-blades, designed to follow commands to the letter, and completely unprepared for something like Nicole. She didn't even deign to move for the first, just gestured with the end of the scythe, a bolt of eldritch lightning bursting from the tip and engulfing the first of the primitive defence-engines. The process was repeated twice before finally it became necessary to fight properly, and, tip leading, Nicole started to swing the weapon slowly with both hands, carving a figure of eight in the ether, advancing at a run. The mind-links to the soldiers glowing like ruby gems, close by, protected by these criminally inept defence programmes. The weapon spun like an artist in Nicole's artificial hands, swiftly decapitating the boxes that wandered ponderously towards her, some spitting short-range projectiles that she sidestepped without a second thought.

She reached the first neural-link, a vile-looking thing, a mental construct of a depiction of the fusing of mind and machine, and she clove it in two. The clock started ticking, and she started moving. Sprinting between each of the link, they were severed as fast as her movement allowed.

In the physical realm, each guard juddered sickeningly as their mind was fried by the sudden recoil of synaptic-to-digital input, one by one cracking against the floor, no reason discernible and never would be – there was no physical damage, it was all mental.

Within the digital realm, Nicole paused after the homicide to glance over here work, wanting to spend no more than the required time there, then sucked herself back out, inadvertently – but possibly purposefully – burning out the mind of the hacker in the process. He wasn't designed to hold Nicole, and his brain couldn't take the I/O ratio, and he quite literally burnt up inside.

With a rush of feeling and elation, the AI construct returned to her hard-light construct body, thankfully still in the trademark purple dress. The transition of colours had stopped – the hackers were dead along with their guards. Whoever had decided to do that must be inept, she guessed.  
No more than a minute had passed, plus a few light-seconds.

By any means necessary.

* * *

The attackers could be heard half a minute before the attack, a low droning noise that reverberated through skulls and caused families to gather loved ones and clasp trinkets they believed would keep them safe.

Four minutes exactly after Nicole had given the warning, Rotor saw them, a black cloud coming in low over the treetops.

Only numbering six hundred, but the battle drones of Ironhive were disciplined, trained to act in complete concert with each other. The battle drones were mindless, and they made the perfect soldier. Bred in batches and taught only a series of commands, the drone squadrons never wavered, only stopping when they or the enemy was dead, and that spelt bad tidings for Knothole.

The counter strike launched before he gave the order – launched from the Solaris launchers on each of the Templars, dozens of shrieked overhead, computers whistling a shrill tune as they sought targets, found them, and began to home in. The exhaust fumes caught the wind, rolling down through the trees and dusting the tops of the soldiers arrayed there, a few coughing heavily because of it.

As trained, the bees splintered, dispersing as the rockets hurtled towards them. They didn't do it out of reason, they did it because they were trained to – danger had no meaning. Even honed to the point of perfection the manoeuvre wasn't fool proof, the rockets corrected directions once again, describing steep turns and banks as they held their targets tightly. Some were evaded, some weren't – the weapons were sophisticated, designed to hit whatever they chose, and three-score of the drones dropped from the skies, wings or other limbs missing, chunks blown from their bodies.

The enemy opened fire as if it was there cue, small-arms rattling off a slow stream of low-recoil bullets. One of the more fortunate points for anyone who faced the bee swarms; in the air the weapons had to minimise recoil or the firer would be tossed all over the place. A low recoil handheld weapon generally meant a low damage output.

Hastily erected steel shelters and force-domes deflected the volleys, as the defenders braved bursts of fire from under their defences. The brown and green camouflage of the soldiers contrasted with the black body gloves the bees had adorning their chests, once again trading resilience for manoeuvrability.

The lower group dropped away, diving towards the ground, blades built into gauntlets clicking into position, each extending a foot from the top of the wrist, made of polished steel, honed for warfare – they weren't there for prisoners, they were there to kill. They landed running, smooth motion that could only be achieved by those born for the sky. Rotor watched this from safety, prematurely lamenting the loss of life he was about to see. Drones were near-mindless, and thus had an extremely high pain threshold, able to continue fighting through wounds that proved mortal, whilst the body refused to accept it. Even a bullet through the brain gave the body about five extra seconds of wild shooting before it finally slumped and admitted defeat, something that Max wanted and everyone else despised.

His train of thought was snapped back into reality as bullets from the squadrons still flying began to thump down on his position, and he responded in kind, craning the railgun skyward, his isolated scouter locking on a target, and he grinned at the hum of the massive weapon, before a flare of blue light erupted from the end and the shot itself, several thousand joules of power, spun away. Of course, the railgun is a line of sight weapon, and cannot correct itself. By the time the criminally slow shot reached its target, said target had moved one…but it is not always about contact. If a railgun were to fire energy and nothing but, the moment it was generated it would explode violently in the barrel, taking out the user and likely anyone within a block radius. So it was that the energy ball, when created, was also shoved into a compact force field, with a limited lifespan, namely the time taken to reach the target. Thus, it was not the impact, but the distance.

The orb detonated with the power and radiance of a small sun, and hundreds of different species averted their eyes, save Nicole, who stared on, hard-light hologram impervious to the retinal damage of so much light. Her robots did likewise, the fight continuing as optic units deactivated and a combination of radar and ultra-violet took over, the bees continuing to drop and return fire.

The miniature sunburst proved to be a mixed blessing – it killed a substantial number of foes, but left the organic defenders half-blinded or taking cover, unable to repel the bees, who kept their eyes firmly on their targets, as they crashed into the line. Moments later the Mobians realised what was going on as their ranks died, and drew sabres of varying lengths and weights, balanced each to their own, and the ring of steel on steel began to bounce down the line, to the accompaniment of the cries of pain and joy alike from the Mobian defenders, their bee enemies staying ominously silent behind black masks.

Rotor decided against using the railgun again, lest he provoke a similar incident as last time. Unclipping the bulky weapon exoskeleton, he set it down carefully, removing the power pack and storing it on his person, and peered around the small stack of weapons he had assembled, eyes coming to rest on a polished minigun, before hooking that up to himself instead, spinning the barrel to heat it slightly in preparation for the stream of bullets it could release.

"Men, always compensating for something." Nicole remarked casually, peering over his shoulder at the oversized weapon.

"Don't you have something better to do, like command your forces?" Rotor snapped back.

"I can see through their eyes and hear through their ears. I am commanding them. Speaking of which, shouldn't you be commanding yours?"

"The chain of command functions independently. I don't like telling them all what to do all the time." He replied, a little quickly, trying not to bring up him destroying the communicator.

"I can get you another one, you know, just ask. They aren't all that hard to manufacture. That said, if you break the next three hundred I might have something to say about it."

Rotor wheeled on her, quite willing to spark the argument even as the battle was done all around them. "You know too well that any means necessary includes the subjugation of any organic allies, and I am not going to give you that chance! This war will be won, and I am not going to let you do so callously. Efficiency isn't always everything, Nicole."

"No, survival is."

"You have a very strange idea about survival." He shouldered the AI aside, stomping from the structure, gun spinning. At the entrance he paused, his bulk framed in the light from the doorway, and glanced back. "I intend to make sure as many people survive as I can, by any means necessary. Two can play at your game, Nicole." He explained, his low rumble of a voice bordering on a growl, and then he left, leaving the construct AI standing alone there, staring after him.

"Efficiency is survivability, and survivability is victory, Rotor. Someday I will make you understand that." Her voice was soft, a whisper, it sounded sad or tearful, yet hidden beneath was a subtle threatening tone. She spoke to empty air and space, a remarkably organic notion, then turned back to the viewing port of the bunker, watching shots fly by. Eventually she looked back to the stack of weapons, and picked up a Mercy II pistol from the stack, checked the ammunition clip and began to launch shots into the sky, her aim slightly off, her construct form unused to the method.

* * *

Rotor ducked and ran from shelter to shelter, seeking the second in command. He paused a moment as a fresh volley clattered down from above, and the soldiers with him, emboldened by his presence, braved the lethal volley for a couple of snap-shots at the targets above. Miraculously they pulled back in, fairly unscathed apart from a glancing wound, and one of them gave the walrus a thumbs up for a confirmed kill. It earned him a comradely slap on the shoulder from the big Mobian, and the subsequent grins from the other soldiers gathered there, before Rotor stuck the minigun out from under the shelter and pulled the trigger.

The sound of the bullets firing from the barrel near-deafened them from under the metal umbrella, as the massive gun churned solid shots into the sky, shots going blind but the sheer number could not fail to bring something down – half a dozen or more dropped as the bullets tore through masks, chest and fragile wing membranes.

Then he was moving again, lugging the heavy weapon with his formidable strength to the relative safety under the shelter, where a group of Mobians fought a handful of bees that had closed on the defensive line. They did not anticipate a new combatant, the walrus clubbing two down with punches swung with great, meaty paws. The bee squad reacted with a disconcerting calm and synchronicity, two of the silent attackers peeling away from the melee and moving to engage Rotor, who's stomach sunk rapidly. They were fast, and he quite clearly wasn't, he was out of his depth this close. Their blade lashed out in scissoring and chopping motions, trying to force him out into the open, where the aerial warriors could take him down under a barrage of fire.

There was only so far he could go with his bulky frame, and he tired quickly in combat, breathing heavily in some vain attempt to regain his dignity as the pair moved in for the kill. He was, of course, unprepared for the flare that went off, seemingly from nowhere, his opponents stumbling backwards, jerking erratically and leaving Rotor dazed, a dark form moving in front of him. A buzzing made itself heard and something wet and viscous splattered Rotor's face, the same action repeating quickly as the walrus' vision cleared.

Nicole. Bloody hands, two corpses. "Efficiency, Rotor. Light cannot be cut, it is as tough as diamond, so it is an efficient cutting tool. Efficiency is survival."

"You're only saving me as a tool, Nicole. I can tell, I've worked with you for long enough. You didn't save me for my sake, you saved me for yours."

"Clever, Rotor. Maybe you should share your theories with Tails when he gets back. Now, would you like to put that weapon to use and maybe take down a few more before that clip runs dry?" she asked him dryly, emotionless. She moved again, solid light, driving claws through the throat of another foe that swung to meet her and died in a quick gurgle, blood fountaining from the wound. Soulless, the word came to mind as she butchered her way through the bee squad, Mobians moving aside for her, casting worried glances at both her and their comrades. She didn't spare them a glance, even after the targets were all dead, just moved on into the open. Rotor watched on with a mix of grim worry and trepidation, as he watched the AI saunter calmly through the fire whipping past from all angles, towards another target. A Mercy II appeared in her hand, shots bursting explosively from the tip accompanied by the smell of gunpowder, the smell, sound and tongue of flame far too exaggerated to be without enhancement of some sort. She had probably cannibalised some of the other weaponry, the walrus sighed grimly, thinking rather uncharitably of all the different ways it could go wrong. He knew Nicole would not go wrong – she was incapable of it.

Despite the ground spitting up dirt around her, Nicole's pace was calm and sure, divots of mud and grass pitching around her, she remained clean through some bizarre miracle of logical and calculation, evading the lethal hail from above even as she darted forward and dashed the throat from another target, not pausing to watch him fall.

Her capacity for killing with a remarkable lack of violence was once again a cause for concern. Even right in the middle of battle, fire raining down around him, it was making Rotor pause and consider what he would do to sort it out. A bullet bounced off the barrel of the minigun with a high-pitched _crack_, deciding him quickly – he would deal with it later. Unfortunately there was nothing he could do now; Nicole's defence protocols rendered her near-invulnerable to wireless hacking, and hard-wired connections only yielded marginally better chances of success. Even prepared, the odds would not be in his favour, and although odds are just that, Rotor was awfully pragmatic and did not take well to gambling, and such odds were not those he would truck with.

Tails…he could turn those statistics to something more desirable. Nicole was still Nicole, a sentient AI that had been brought into existence through the near-impossible CI glitch, the Constructed Intelligence error, which resulted often in a computer gaining intelligence. It was the reason Nicole was so _Mobian_; she was never created, she was born, _born_, through the random firing of a fuse and processor.


	9. Butcher's Shield i

The attack came at the cusp of dawn, the attackers streaming from the forest, expecting the gates to be in ruin and the enemy crippled, ready for the killing blow. Some weapons were not loaded; certain tanks did not have shells in chambers; the Nightmare Legion was expecting a march into the city, a slaughter.

Instead they found soldiers, tempers flaring at the underhand tactics employed, awake and trained on the jungle, and guns shattered the morning silence with a thunderous roar, a black curtain of bullets slashing from barrels down towards the emerging foes, the defence of the gates planned in meticulous detail in less than an hour, the time taken for the legion to mobilise and reach the city once again.

This onrush of unexpected fire transformed the battle – it was no longer a conqueror's march, and had become a siege once again. The Legion troops, taking unforeseen casualties and damage, fell back to the treeline as sergeants shouted at corporals, and the corporals shouted at their men into organising themselves, running about like an ant's nest in the shade of the towering wall and crippled gates.

Weapon teams set up for a long stay, piling sandbags up around their positions next to the largest of the trees, infantrymen sheltering in the shade of other such fauna or taking solace in their position behind the battle tanks. The surprised offensive began to return the favour, and bullets began to wing both ways, accompanied by shells, rockets and the even more infrequent laser bolt. After a little while, the fire began to lessen, both sides seeing how the other was entrenched, and choosing to conserve ammunition in favour of more accurate fire. It became a haven for the sharpshooters, high-velocity rounds snapped off at exposed limbs or furtive glances over cover, the tanks continuing to pump out a steady stream of ordnance – accuracy was not a factor, how big the blast was became their concern.

Turk watched the drama play out, hate and anger burning in his eyes as he took a glance down the ragged line, taking in his forces and his enemy's with a glance. With one hand he patted the nearest soldier on the shoulder, muttering something encouraging – although he could not recall what later – before wheeling away, irritated, marching past lines of soldiers carting around ammunition on tracked vehicles, towards where the administrative centre of his army lurked, behind ranks of armoured soldiers.

Striding purposefully into one of the tents as heads turned to face him, he picked up Geoffrey by his neck and carried him out of the tent, taught muscles keeping the smaller man off the ground with little discomfort for Turk.

"Defenceless?" he roared at the skunk, who in his defence was doing a stoic job of not turning blue, "you made us walk there like lambs to the slaughter!" his grip was released, and Geoffrey fell to the ground, gasping for air. "Need I remind you that we are only in this together so far as the city is under our control? My men will need to live to see that day, even if I have to see to it that you don't."

"Don't…don't fool yourself Turk…you can't do this…without me." Geoffrey wheezed between breaths, as he helped himself up against a tree trunk. "You are no ruler…"

"Don't fool yourself Geoffrey." The general replied, mimicking the other's words with a smirk, "you've always been the servant, the side-lines. You wouldn't be able to run a kingdom, you need me." He finished with a snarl, beak clacking in unspoken threat.

Geoffrey grinned, still heaving. "I can always change sides…idiot. I can convince them…you took me hostage…to get at the king. Phrase yourself carefully…it's not hard…"

"You can't do anything if you're dead, Geoffrey. I could quite easily empty your brain case now and end it there."

"This is turning into a taunting match…I made an error, big deal. You sent your men in without confirmation…you are just as much to blame for casualties as I am. They are your men, so do not implicate me…now, how about we get on with this?" Geoffrey was growing stronger as his breath returned and he reasserted his position. Turk was wrong – he had been Max's aid for years, but one part of being a leader was the ability to change face.

The falcon stared at him silently, a hunter's gaze that, though he was loathe to admit it, terrified Geoffrey. As is aforementioned, it was to his advantage he could remain calm on his exterior, even when confronted with that petrifying glare. Now to see if this gambit would pay off. He waited five seconds, ten…Turk stalked past him, having said nothing, heading back to the front lines, his ornamental cloak disturbing the leaves and twigs around him, ruffled by the wind.

Geoffrey smoothed down his rumpled uniform and walked calmly and confidently back into the tent.

"And what was that about?" one of those seated inquired at his entrance. "You look weather-beaten."

"Oh, nothing. Turk and I had made miscalculations, he mistakenly pinned it on me. We sorted things out, it is of no concern."

"It's about this morning attack, isn't it?"

"Yes. The gates are in disrepair as I predicted, but the army was ready for us. Turk, pragmatic, uncharacteristically put faith in my words and marched in without any scouts or forward warnings. It will not occur again, I can assure you."

"It had better not. We have all invested a great deal in this campaign, and if it fails, you will need not worry about Max's wrath. We will get there first."

"Yes, and you have made that clear several times now. Would you prefer to write it down?" Geoffrey smiled patronisingly and leaned forward, still standing, clasping his hands together behind his back. "I'm sure it would save you a lot of effort."

* * *

Antoine had given up his position in sniping. He was a good shot, and his Voltage rifle rarely missed, but a sword was more comfortable and there was no end to the number of people who were willing to take his position. Along with half a dozen other soldiers, he sat slumped back against the concrete below the firing lane, listening to the crack and bang of long-range weapons discharging on either side, to the constant ring of artillery detonation. The others had begun counting, making vulgar remarks with each detonation or confirmed hit, and after a little caution, Antoine had found himself joining in. It had certainly surprised the men; their general was in fact still Mobian! Either way, they had relaxed again after a little, and the general was certain it would become a running gag in the army from now on, if there was someone willing to point out each detonation, that is.  
As the next detonation sprung from the air and a soldier next to him made some vague remark about compensation, Antoine felt the presence of mind to check in on Bunnie.

"How are tze pistols going?" he asked down the comm with one hand.

"And ah thought ah had the biggest guns in this thang…Sumthin's gonna have to be done about that artillery sugah, or we ain't gonna stay up here forever."

"Our conventional rockets don't have long enough to prepare tze shot…is there not something ma Cheri can do?"

"Save the sweet-talk for later sugah, they are tryin' to shoot us, after all." A wash of static crackled through the comm as she redirected power into her weapon systems, and Antoine risked a glance over the top to see a tongue of blue fire lance from somewhere along the wall, cutting warriors down no less calmly than a farmer would scythe down wheat. The stream lasted no more than two seconds, the kills could not be estimated at a glance, but Antoine guessed that half a dozen had gone down to that jet of molten plasma.

"Do you think that would cut through tze tanks?" he asked as the buzzing static cleared.

"Ah don't actually know, Tails never actually told me what it all did. Poor kid didn't get the chance, with that Fiona gal walkin' in and askin' all sorts a questions."

"I thought tze boy was with-"

"Don't mean someone else can get all mussy over him sugah."

* * *

"Tails, I got the list." Fiona whispered into the comm as she made her way back along the employee corridors, names stored on the data in the suit, the console damaged technically beyond repair – software-wise. "Five people are missing…most aren't really worth worrying about, I don't think…but…"

"Yes? Don't worry I have a bit more time on my hands, we concluded for the evening and the battle kind of got the impetus out of us."  
"Well…Geoffrey's missing. Unaccounted for – two of the other four have legitimate reasons, and another couple were in the reserve forces and got called to the wall, but Geoff just seems to have dropped off radar."

"So, that answers the question of the inside man. It's not a great surprise, really, but I couldn't well do anything without confirmation." He sounded ever so slightly disappointed at the results. In his room within the palace he lay back on his bed, drumming his hand against the sideboard while drawing lazily in the air with the other. He wasn't in the best of moods – the king had finally woken and joined them in the debate, and suddenly have proven much more of a hindrance than help. Out of spite than tactical benefit he had disagreed with Tails' solutions to problems, the fox believed, and slowed the decision-making of the council down considerably, though they still remained on the side of Tails' strategically sound plans and stratagems. Alicia's attempts to curtail her husband's irksome stubbornness had gone unheard too, the grizzled king impervious to the soft warnings whispered in his ear by his wife.

"I don't see where it leaves us, Geoffrey's missing, we know who was inside. He's missing, so we can't really do much with him, can we?" Fiona thought out loud down the comm.

"That's not my style, Fiona. I guessed that once whatever the inside man was doing had been finished, he or she would be outside as fast as they could move. It had to be someone who could blend in easily, someone who couldn't be touched. Geoffrey has that lust for power, he was an easy suspect. No, I'm hoping that with the delicate nature of the situation I can persuade the council to grant me emergency powers. The king might not like it, in fact I'm certain that he won't, but I really don't care at this point." He replied with only a trace of humour. He always enjoyed beating Max at his own game. The old man always forgot that the teenager was in fact far more adept at politics than he let show.

"Is the peaceful method taking too long?" Fiona replied with only a touch of weariness. She had found that Tails could be very direct, when he wanted.

"It's not as if I'm going to kill anyone Fi, just knock the king down a step or two. This might be his kingdom, but it's my war just as much as his, and he's getting in the way. I ruled out the killing option almost immediately – I think Sally might not have liked me for it."

"Tails!" Fiona was aghast, she was no friend to the king, but the fact Tails had even _considered…_

"I say almost – I _did_ have to think of it first. Listen, Fiona, if it puts your mind at ease, why don't you become the king's personal guard?"

She realised what Tails had led her into. "Alright, alright, I take your point. Still want me to come to your room?"

"Yea, We need to work out what we do next. I can't do it myself, unfortunately, so I need you to act as my eyes, ears and hands outside the palace. I think you know where my room is, come on up."

Once again Fiona's hearted skyrocketed. He was still oblivious! Tails, the guy you couldn't get anything past, and she was fooling him! It was only one occasion, but she could not remember when it had ever happened before. She wasn't looking properly as she left the servant quarters, the hardwood making a smooth transition into carpeted flooring as the surroundings became lavish once more, and she met someone coming the other way. The pair stumbled into each other, and as a reply was about to issue from Fiona's lips, she remembered that the Mirror Shield still cloaked her, and she left the confused servant staring around him, unable to fathom why he had been momentarily barred from walking through a patch of air.

There was a moment, a few minutes later, when she chose to pause outside his door – only for a few seconds, and once again she could not for the live of her find a suitable reason to explain it to either herself…or Tails.

"Come on in, I'm not going to bite, Fi." The fox explained as he opened the door for her, gesturing a motion of entrance with his free hand. He had removed his gloves, she noticed, and he saw her looking.

"It feels cooler, and these massive gloves are a bit cumbersome. I only wear them these days out of convenience, makes me look more civilised, apparently. To me it just makes me look _whiter._"

"Why not have some different gloves?" she suggested as she sat down on one of the empty chairs.

"They're still gloves."

"Yea, but if you make your own pair, and not just rely on Telera's needlework, you get to choose what they look like."

"I might look into it. Not the most important thing on my mind, though. Come on." He motioned to her and walked to the window. Waiting for her to join him there, he continued. "You can see the battle from here. We caught them off-guard, thank the source, but with the gates and their defences in ruins, there is only so long before they breach the walls. Antoine is going to have to pull back into the city sometime, and the question I need the answer too is when."

"You want me to find out?"

Tails smiled sadly and shook his head. "No…Ant can get to me when he needs to withdraw. He's the general for a reason; he'll know when it's time to pull out, and I'm not willing to give any more of us to the defence of the wall. You don't commit your best to a losing battle. You did your part, watching them, so close to their camp. I'm telling you this now because you need to know what to do beforehand. When the gates fall – and they will – I want you to make sure that the enemy general, whoever he is, dies."

"Tails…"

"This is a war, Fiona. We lose this and…I hope I don't need to finish that. We can't always abide by every law, every edict that us freedom fighters are meant to. That general has to die, or his men will continue to fight. If we kill him, we can prevent other unnecessary deaths. I'm not killing him because I see no other alternative, I'm asking this because it will case the least collateral damage. I am trying to ensure the survival of as many as I can. Now, I ask again, can you do this for me?"

He was right, of course, it was the best way, the kindest in a sense, and really, in the end… "I'll do it." She told him in a shaky whisper. …in the end, she couldn't say no to him.

"Thank you. I know you will do this for me, and I'm not asking you to do anything more. If it happens you are capable of ending the general's life with only a single shot, without killing any of his soldiers, aides or compatriots, then by all means. I task you with his death, and that is all. Perhaps you should get back to your room, get some sleep somewhere comfortable." He finished, ending the conversation and so any space for argument. Fiona so wanted to protest, to turn down this unfortunate state of affairs, but she could not. It was Tails…and she could not find an alternative herself. She nodded quietly, and left without another word.

Tails heard the door close behind him, and glanced briefly over his shoulder to make sure it was so. He swore softly to himself – he had manipulated one of his friends, someone who trusted him. Killing the enemy general would end the war without a doubt, but it would spare no lives. Those soldiers that had defected, who had formed the separatist army, would be executed under the traitor's law. Without fail, the ten-thousand men, the full half of the Acorn Military who had turned traitor, would be executed. It would be that way, and he wouldn't stop it. To do so would cost him far too much. He had some calls to make.

"Antoine, how long have we got?"

"Tzey have held at tze edge of tze jungle, as expected. If we can hold them there, we have about eight hours." The coyote's voice was clouded by the crack and coil of gunfire echoing down the line along with his voice.

"I'll begin preparations for the tactical withdrawal, then. We're going to try and set up street barricades with the help of the locality, along with getting gun nests and other useful knickknacks ready for your men when they can't hold them back. I have to stay at the castle, but the others will be joining you when the walls fall."

"And you are sure of tze plan you have made?"

"Of course I'm not, but we want to still be alive by the end of this, so my other option of a tactical nuclear strike is out of the question, unless you don't care about mortality rates any more – of course, if you were to come up with a better plan, I would gladly defer to you. Speaking of which, do you have a better plan just yet?"

"No, I admit, but it is tze margin of error for your plan which concerns me so- not even a single mistake can be made, by you or me."

"Some of the best plans are the most delicate ones. Often a blunt strategy gives a bland outcome, while a more intricate one will yield a greater result, if performed correctly of course. You want to keep your men alive, well, believe me, I have run it through my head and if this is done correctly we will lose far fewer men that were we to slog this war out the long way. Ant…I want these men and women to live as much as you do. If this fails hold me responsible, whatever, but go through with this if you want me to try and save as many as I can."

"I will follow…do not let me down, Tails."

The teenage fox didn't reply – he had switched frequencies. "Sonic, you awake?"

"Are you kidding? Buddy, I've been awake since I heard we were getting shot at again. What's the haps?"

"I need you back in the city again – no, don't object, I know you will, we need to set up barricades for when Antoine falls back. The others are at the wall, and you're the fastest, you can get things around faster."

"Have you noticed that all you've let me do has nothing to do with the fighting?"

"Indeed I have. Spindash doesn't work if you can't cross the fifty feet or so to get to your target, Sonic. You at the walls would only make for some fast target practise or the guys trying to kill us."

"I don't like being kept out of the action."

"How do you think I feel?" Tails sounded exasperated. "I've been in here for three days, trying to shut the king up while coordinating the defence of the city with Antoine and the queen and her ministers. I would sooner be out on the walls, but I'm doing what I need to- speaking of which, I'll give you a choice, fair enough?"

"What's the catch?"

"Savvy, Sonic. You're learning. Well, your choice is this: Either you help sorting out barricades, or you sort out your problems between you and Sally. She hasn't said anything since she arrived in the castle. Or both. Yea, that sounds good, how about you go sort out this defence, then come back and get your act together. Sound good?" Tails wasn't being cruel, he didn't think so anyway. He was sorting out problems that were no concern of his, so why should he skirt around the problem? No need to be delicate about it for him, and he had found Sonic wasn't the one to always pick up on subtlety.

"Can you stop bringing that up?"

"No, Sonic. I'm not going to stop bringing it up. I waited half a year already in the vain hope that one of you would sort things out internally. I've already waited that long, so I'm going to make sure you sort things out. Don't complain about me trying to do so when you haven't taken steps to try it yourself. You and Sally want to be together, so bloody well prove it on your own, if you don't want me to make you do so."

"Don't beat around the bush Tails."

"It's one of the things that seems more than simple to me. You both like each other enough to say you love each other, but there's also enough there for you to complain about each other. Neither of you are perfect, so get over it and get on with your lives. You're always going to have something that you disagree on, so for fuck sake just live with it, or stop submitting all of us to it."

"You're not making this easy for me." Sonic complained down the line.

"_Are you fucking joking?_ Sonic, I can't make it easier for you. You've got a problem with her, she's got a problem with you. It's always going to be like that, so get over it. You _must_ have way more things in common to admit to love, so put the problem aside, or compromise or something. Whatever you do, sort it out."

"Are you with me or against me?"

"I'm not trying to get either you or Sally. I'm not on any side, I'm just trying to get you two back together because I want to be able to sleep at night without you shouting at each other through the wall."

"We're that loud?" the blue hedgehog's voice wavered slightly down the line.

"I can hear you through two feet of concrete, metal and paint, Sonic. Yes, you are loud."

"Ouch…I didn't think they were that loud…"

"That's not the point here, Sonic. You and Sal, sort things out. Believe me and _believe me_ if nothing else, you do _not_ want me to intervene." He clicked off the link before Sonic could reply and sighed, leaning against the window sill. He was too young for all of this.


	10. Secondary Objective ii

Ten hours ago, now, the bees had withdrawn. Not, Rotor suspected, because of any reason other than to conserve energy. Both sides had been fighting for hours, and both sides were losing strength as the battle wore on. Then, as night set in, the swarm had withdrawn to some arbitrary point outside radar range, Nicole suspected. The bee swarm was rebuilding its strength, and it was a good guess that they weren't particularly good at night-flying. Both sides were taking the time to lick their wounds, before going at each with tooth and claw when morning came in a couple of hours.  
Nicole had drawn in the Onslaughts to the city itself, and now they moved in groups through the streets, silent sentries watching the skies for any sign of invasion, the other warriors of the legion standing at their pre-set posts around the city.

"They'll attack as soon as it's light enough to fly, if the training regime they use hasn't changed." Nicole offered to Rotor as they sat in the bunker, watching each other over a small table and a couple of chairs.

"It all depends on how they have been trained. We don't know what hive they're from, so it could be at any time from now until midday."

"The weapons were Ironhive, Rotor. I examined them during the battle." The walrus decided not to question how, "As soon as the sun comes up, we will expect them to arrive once more. My legion can be ready, but you will want to make some preparations of your own. We had to change our strategy in four minutes last time, so here's plenty more time to make sure you have a working battle plan in place before they arrive."

"Same as before, stay under the shelters, shoot back, don't let them get close."

"You organics have remarkably simple ways of dealing with things…does this opponent seem eerie to you?" it made Rotor glance up at her.

"The silence and synchronicity is disturbing, but no more than your own forces."

"That's what seems to strange. You expect my forces to fight and die in silence – they have no instinct, no wish to cry out or shout pain or victory. Most organics do. Wounded, a soldier might cry out or even just grunt with pain, but he acknowledges it actively and it comes to the attention of those nearby. These bees, these warriors that we fight, do not have instinct, no free will, but somehow are still organic, still Mobian. It's disturbing to see living creatures act in such a way."

"Nicole, the city-wide AI, disturbed? That has to be a first." The larger Mobian snorted.

"It is. Not in my life have I ever been disturbed by things, amused, confused, on occasion worried, but being disturbed is a new experience. I'm not finding it all that pleasant." The lynx bristled uncomfortably, a more Mobian display of emotion.

"Well get used to it. I'm not going out to ask them if they can smile at us, so it looks like were stuck with bland masks to fight until this is over. What are the estimated casualties?

We lost approximately two-hundred-and-fifty soldiers, they took two-hundred losses. Another fifty of ours are wounded, whilst they left their wounded on the battlefield to die. If we plan more carefully for what we are expecting this time, we can finish this before sunset."

"We lost a quarter of our fighting force." Rotor observed.

"Our _organic_ fighting force. My legion took substantially fewer losses, and I have made changes to their patrol routes for the battle. We were also caught off-guard, to a degree. The losses are not representative of today. They have approximately four hundred fighting soldiers, and even accounting for today's losses we still outnumber then two-to-one. To effectively counter them we need to slow down their metabolism – they live too long, even after death. We need to give them back their pain."

"Not the best way you could have put it."

"It's what we need to do, though, isn't it? No point skirting around it because you're squeamish."

"Well then, I suppose you have an idea?"

"Actually, no."

Rotor jerked upright, eyes widening slightly in surprise. "For fuck's sake, girl, if you're going to make plans make sure you actually have them."

"In almost any other case I would have one. The bees follow disciplined instructions drilled into organic minds, a method of fighting that can commonly only be achieve through the use of data-engrams and neural links. If they had said links, I could just jack into the network and, given a little time, kill them all from there. They don't have neural augmentations, I can't touch them mentally."

"You're not helping."

"I'm actually being of the greatest help. Since we have no obvious way of do that which we would, we take stock of what we have. We outnumber them, we are tougher than them, and we are more versatile. On top of that, we have the home field advantage. They're fighting a long way from home out here. Organise our defences around that." She sat forward in the seat, propping her head up with her hands. "I'm being civil here Rotor. It would be far more efficient for me to take control of the soldier's neural augmetics, but I'm trying to refrain from doing so. I don't like controlling organics, and I'm attempting to give you your choice as well. Take it or leave it, but if you take it, make sure you use it."

"And your willing to abide by my judgement?"

"Unless I think it could prove a waste of resources, yes." The AI replied, noncommittally, adding a slight shrug to follow the point.

Rotor decided to take it and run. "Right, then, what do we have on their weapons?"

"Compared to our own, they're terrible. Low recoil to avoid destabilisation during flight, leads to a weapon with a fairly low output. According to what I've seen, unless you decided to refit everyone with paper armour, you shouldn't have much of a problem. It's their manoeuvrability we have to concern ourselves with. They are born for the skies, they can move a lot faster and as you have already born witness to, they are tough combatants when you get up close."

"So we either need to train the soldiers to fight them, or stop them getting close." Rotor observed.

"I would recommend the latter. If we want to eliminate this in one fell swoop, we don't have time to implement the training necessary to teach the effective combat methods."

"Then I think I know how we can do this." Rotor grinned, his tusks glinting.

"Enlighten me."

"We switch places – in part. The swarm still only uses steel blades, not vibro or electric, they aren't capable of using anything that advanced. The LKD take to the rooftops, and direct their efforts primarily into taking the swarm down while it is still in the air. Your legion combats the ground forces; your armour is quite capable of deflecting common steel."

"It sounds good in theory." Nicole agreed, nodding her head, "but it's still vague. I assume you have specifics?"

"Indeed I do. For your forces, I will leave it largely up to you, as is your right, but I am thinking a tandem operation between Templars and Sunders. As the swarm lands, the Templars will be at the forefront, supported by a section of your Onslaughts, to weather the initial strike. Once the distance is closed, the Sunders and remaining Onslaught robots will engage. The Sunder's proficiency in close quarters should maximise the damage it does, while the Onslaughts keep the battle confined by acting as perimeter guards."

"And the Imperators?"

"Weathering the initial assault, alongside the Templars. If their weapons are as weak as you claim, they should have no trouble with it."

"Sounds good. There are amendments In need to make, but otherwise I will defer to the logic." The hologram flickered slightly, the AI sending away commands to her forces in one controlled burst, before returning to the council of war. "And your forces?"

"They take your place on the rooftops. If we put the shelters up there, they will have a higher output against the aerial forces than your legion, and should take a higher toll as well as serving to minimise the forces that can ground themselves." He was interrupted as Nicole held up one hand in protest.

"One moment." She said. That moment was only a fraction of a second, as another command fluttered away into the command nodes. "I'm going to put a small detachment on the rooftops alongside your own troops, to funnel the swarm into more concise lanes, hopefully raising the hit ratio of your own soldiers."

"You think you can spare it?"

"You said it yourself. The more we pluck from the skies, the less we will need to face on the ground." She tapped her nose with one finger, jokingly.  
"Then that's all we need to discuss." The walrus concluded.

"I assume you are going to be a bit more succinct with your troops?" Nicole asked cautiously.

"Yes, but there's no need to tell you the exact details. You know what your units are doing, and mine perform a separate task. It would just waste time for me to explain it now. We need to get this defence ready, the shelters relocated and more constructed, and my soldiers need briefing." Rotor stood slowly, pushing back his chair and sighing heavily. He padded over to the wall and picked up the minigun, checking the ammunition feed and spare drums, all the while fixing himself into the support exoskeleton for the massive weapon. Out of habit he spun the barrels manually, watching them all click round. Satisfied he heaved the gun off its mounting and marched out of the door.

"Rotor?" Nicole's voice made him pause, turn slightly.

"Yes?" he asked gruffly, missing the reply – if any was made – as he caught something spinning through the air with his free hand. He opened his paw as he looked down; a thin coil of segmented metal, clips at each end, greeted him. A new communicator.

"I know why you broke the old one, but you're going to need this during today's trials. You can lecture me on the finer points later." Nicole pointed out, as she turned and walked to the window, stopping and peering out into the early sun as it began the morning ascent. It outlined her, shot a striking figure in that golden dawn. Rotor wanted to growl at her, rebuke her for what she was almost asking him to do, but he didn't. There was no point – it would be only a longer waste of time. With one hand he clipped the fresh communicator onto his right ear, the coil winding down his cheek to the edge of his mouth, fixing itself into the fur there too. The virtual HUD flickered into life, running new start-up safety diagnostics, the lines of text scrolling by fading to be replaced with various combat displays: Radar, target reticule, biomedical data and ammunition counter.

"You've made some changes." He remarked, the little hub shifting around his vision at unspoken commands directed through his brain.

"It doesn't need neural hard-wiring to work itself. I thought it might put you at ease. I also made it vermillion." She explained over her shoulder.

"Now, don't you have soldiers to brief? Two hours, counting down Rotor."

The walrus grunted his recognition and shifted his bulk out of the doorway, the small bunker shrinking behind him as he made his way down the muddy embankment and into the lines themselves. A good deal of the soldiery had already roused itself, woken in confusion by the clunking and hissing of the repositioning robots. He marched down past privates who threw questions at him, and began shouting orders into the communicator-function.

"Alright, everyone up! Anyone who's awake, wake anyone who isn't, and them help them hauling the shelters up to the rooftops. All available units are to relocate to the rooftops, and when these flying bastards show up I want all eyes hitting the skies. Nicole is going to handle the ground forces, we're making it easier. Space out, heavy weapons apart, I want rockets on the tallest and snipers in windows, and someone get a portable AA battery up on the communications tower in the east district, rooftops as numbered on your heads-up!"

A few moments passed as the orders filtered into heads of bleary-eyed soldiers, still waking, and then the chain of command took over, and more orders and commands, issued from various points in the hierarchy, began to pass through the network, soldiers rousing squad-mates and checking weapons for any defects. Squad by squad, the army filed away from the defence line, each man hauling a piece for one of the many shelters with him. To this end the citizenry were ordered to remain indoors, so to not hinder the redeployment.

Rotor directed the deployment from the palace, watching the soldiers relocate by lieu of a holographic map conjured by projectors in the floor and updated by scout drones orbiting the city. The hexagonal shelters went up first, larger ones than those hastily erected on the first day, black and silver open shelters, covered gun-pits from which war could be made. Two squads were assigned to each of the roofs at the city perimeter, single squads deployed further in, specialists eschewing flamers and rocket launchers for autocannons and timed-grenade launchers.

Next, with the assistance of available Imperators, came the task of ensuring that every shelter would be sufficiently-stocked as so to be self-sufficient. Mobian soldiers carried crates of small-arms ammunition by hand, the Imperator units hefting the larger calibre ammunition for the tripod weapons, along with grenade bandoliers and cylinders containing sustenance for the soldiers that would be spending the day there.

Nicole and Rotor pored over the holographic map, watching forces realign around each other, the AI keeping one eye on the radar for signs of enemy approach.

As the two hours elapsed, soldiers settled in for the coming storm, fingers on triggers and some sort of shelter nearby. After the previous day's fighting nerves were a little high-strung, the loss of their comrades still fresh in the minds of the living.

"They're here." Nicole warned Rotor across the table. The words had an ominous quality to it, a dark edge.

"They're incoming, four minutes." Rotor translated down the comm to his soldiers, and the squads went through last-minute ammunition and assembly checks, gathering a handful of clips to beside their spot and fixing their eyes on the skies.

The first indication that the attack had begun was the low-pitched humming, the sound of near four-hundred wings beating in unison, merging to form one noise, the incoming army visible as a black wave over the treetops. The AA battery, prepared to fire on any aerial target that presented itself, emptied the salvo into the sky in a screeching, squealing mass of metal, flame and exhaust fumes, the two-dozen fragmentation rockets burning away towards the mass in a potentially devastating pre-emptive strike. The populace watched the technology burn away into the skies above the forest, muttering prayers of absolution or salvation. Soldiers watched with a mix of concern and excitement, anticipating contact with the enemy once again and imagining from their crow's nests what was about to happen.

The rockets detonated in a string of liquid pops, the case cracking thrice and allowing the insides, dozens upon dozens of razor fragments to spill out at over four hundred miles per hour, crashing into the flying swarm, lacerating and decapitating the mindless drones that flew on regardless of the death around them or any personal injury.

The order to begin firing was given, and as one, almost a thousand guns erupted and the sky became a conflagration of shells and bullet-fire. At first they fired on full-automatic as the remaining members of the swarm made approach, aiming unnecessary, unable to miss firing into the mass of winged shapes, then the opposition began to fight proper. The swarm disbanded into squads, depleted or otherwise, weaving and dodging streams of fire in the same eerie silence as the previous day, and soldiers on the ground switched to single-shot or semi-automatic, choosing targets more carefully. The swarm returned fire, low-recoil ammunition thudding down on the rooftops or pinging off metal shelters. Soldiers took wounds and died as shots hit home on unprotected or weak spots, or brought down through weight of fire alone, dozens of shots pulping internal organs by force of compression. Both sides were taking casualties already, but now the stage was set to change.

As the swarm spread out, as if dissolving into the sky, Nicole began her side of the bargain, the redirected Onslaught groups activating, lights winking on over their carapaces and the nimble robots skating out into the open. Positioned at the furthest reaches of the invasion, they felt the fringes of the descending curtain and began to curtail the advance, trimming the edges with bolt cannons and uncompromising accuracy.

Obeying their ingrained commands, the bees on the flanks began to peel away, back into the centre, and those who occupied the centre found themselves hurriedly congested in the air while bullets flew all around. Conflicting orders entered their mind – the command to spread out to reduce damage taken, and the command to move away from the source of damage, they ran through the options subconsciously and came to a decision.

Dive.

Abruptly the swarm pulled up sharply, and dove towards the ground, changing direction in little more than a second. The rain of bullets still continued in an unrelenting hail down on the city's defenders, slower though, as rank by rank guns were stowed and blades extended, dropping towards the ground below. With the bulk of the force still out from the edge of the city, they were forced to land on the ground fought over during the previous day, and advance towards the wall of steel to greet them.

The remnants of the swarm vanguard found a different story. They lived at the rim of the cloud, and as such when the wordless command to dive was given, they hung over the city like an organic outcrop, and came down on rooftops, to the surprise and protests of the soldiers there. Surprised shouts rang from rooftops as squads hurriedly drew sabres or affixed bayonets in the moments before the bees touched down.

It doesn't always seem that way, but there is an unspoken, unmarked transition when a soldier goes from shooting to stabbing. A little mental shift, from a gun to blade or hammer, and often the soldier knows when it's coming. They are able to make that little mental shift without much effort.

These soldiers, however, had not been expecting this. They had believe that they would expend their ammunition plucking the bees from the sky, as Nicole blasted them apart on the ground. So when nigh-on one hundred descended on various rooftops it came as a surprise, and well-trained soldiers fumbled with blades where at other times they would have drawn it smoothly.

For a moment, the defence buckled.

The opening seconds saw the Mobians on the rooftops bend under the sudden pressure, men and women gutted by blades, fumbling with their own weapons in those crucial moments of contact.

The seconds after that…those seconds saw Rotor and Nicole. The pair split up, to lend their support to the rooftop defence.

Rotor, appeared on one rooftop in a starburst of golden light, a by-product of ring-teleportation, hefting the minigun with him. The new scouter whirred silently as it detected targets, and as he pulled the trigger it corrected the firing frame to avoid friendly-fire and to maximise damage, the stream of bullets erupting from the barrel cutting through the bees yet inextricably weaving its way round the embattled LKD soldiers. When the churning sound stop and with it the bullets, the men, hiding behind various objects, lifted their heads cautiously.

"How about we get these guys out of our city?" Rotor asked with a dangerous, toothy grin. "Weapons up, you've probably all got friends on the other rooftops that need help. See what sort of gunfire you can lay down!"

Nicole danced onto the battlefield in the guise of the modified Onslaught robots, skating towards the defensive line on the ground as the bees crashed into it and her plan deployed. With one final explosive volley from the defending Templars and Imperators that pulped the front rank, the rest of the army, the fast-moving Onslaughts and devastating Sunders, moved forward past their robotic brethren and unleashed themselves.

Here up close, the Onslaught robots could fully utilise themselves, moving among the bees in a series of balletic pirouettes and spins, energy blades mounted on their feet blurring into life and decapitating whatever it met, as bolt cannons detonated heads and torsos at close range. This close they were possibly the ultimate killing machines – if it weren't for the presence of the Sunders.

Each fully twenty feet tall, a hulking mass of metal and weapons, they were second to none in terms of resilience. Flamers ignited and sent out swathes of blue fire, melting some armour and baking others inside theirs, it washed over the robotic allies with little more than a few burn marks and swept onto fresh targets.

Nicole herself danced from target to target, enjoying the perfect silence of her own forces while privately loathing that of her foes, the Onslaughts around her acting in perfect synchronicity with each other and the rest of the force, a dance so intricately woven that only Nicole could completely grasp the web, and she was trapping her targets within it.

From there it was a losing battle for the attackers – they were outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, half by foes who were invincible to them and half to ones that had the tenacity to be so. It was no longer a case of coordinating the organic and robotic forces; it had descended just to the point where all that mattered was both whether or not there was a foe in front of you, and then whether or not he was dead.

Nonetheless, the battle lasted another four hours. The bees would not retreat, they could not, and such stubborn metabolism and pain threshold kept many of them still fighting long past what was really possible.

But there was only so long, and they were beaten...eventually.

"Is that it?" the grizzled walrus asked Nicole in the aftermath, bloodied by the fighting, though much of the blood was not his own.

"I'm not picking up any more targets on radar." Nicole confirmed. She was not naturally weary, but had assumed a like stance to fit in more with the rest of the soldiers. "I think if they had any more reinforcements they would have committed to the battlefield during the fighting earlier."

"Bastards." Rotor articulated. "We'll keep up defence for a little longer, just to be sure. Of course, it doesn't answer the important question. We still don't know how Mobotropolis will fare."


	11. Chain Breaker i

"I'm really getting bored of this, you know." Retis remarked casually, watching Telera fire off another couple of shots from her Retaliation rifle.

_"Go down to the gate proper then, stand in the middle and wait until they break in."_ the tigress replied without looking away from the scope, dropping to behind the concrete wall as something heavy sprayed splinters of concrete from the wall above her. She counted to three on one hand, then sprung up again, training the scope on another target, pulling the trigger and dropping again, free hand signing obscenities.

A second detonation went off, spitting more concrete chips onto the pair of freedom fighters. A piece scored down Telera's cheek, causing a thin laceration, and she passed one hand over it with a slightly concerned look.

"Is it bad?" Retis asked her.

She shook her head dismissively. _"It's only light. I've been through worse."_

"Then we should withdraw. We've only got a few hours until we lose the walls. I want you to be in a good position before everything breaks down again."

_"You want me to be?"_

"I mean- I thought it would be a good idea." Retis explained evasively, catching on to the ramifications of what he implied. He opened his comm to Antoine.

"Hey, buddy, how long have we got?"

"Three hours." The Frenchman replied, accompanied by the cracking report of snipers at his section of wall. "I have someone called Hartley, he is going to manage tze skeleton crew as we withdraw."

_"How far back are we moving?"_ Telera signed to Retis, the echidna subsequently passing the question down the line. One of the disadvantages to being mute – she couldn't use the comm, unless they wanted to learn morse-code as well.

"To tze inner city. Tze boundary provides natural defences, but tze retreat means we cannot utilise tze heavy weaponry. From now on we will have tze people to consider."

"Puts a new meaning on collateral damage, doesn't it?"

"Indeed. Tze king will not be pleased if we blow up his subjects, non?"

"I'm less worried about the king and more worried about the subjects, if I'm perfectly honest." Retis shrugged. Beside him, the tigress sprung from cover, a pair of shots cracking from the end of her weapon as she dropped once again back into over. _"Two more. We might exhaust them before they get inside at this rate."_

"Only if Tails has some new bombs in store." Retis grunted, rising to his feet in a crouch. "Come on, let's get you out of here."

He had to half-drag, half-lead her away from her place in the defence, and she only acceded grudgingly when he pointed out that if she died, he would have to explain to Tails how it all happened. She wanted to spare him that, didn't she?

* * *

Fiona had settled for the palace gate. Tails had left it up to her to choose a spot, and she had followed her instincts. A bad choice, she expected, but in the end it did just come down to a good guess. From what she had read and been told of, an army usually made a statement. That statement commonly involved a march to the palace – or whatever mighty edifice was available – gates to proclaim their rightful ownership of the city. Always a good opportunity for some selective shooting.

"This area is restricted ma'am- what are you doing with that rifle?"

"I'm going to shoot someone. What do you think?" Fiona looked away from the barrel to the speaker. One of the Royal Guard. "I'm acting under Tails' instruction."

"Can you confirm that?"

"Call him yourself." The fox shrugged noncommittally, peering back down the scope. From where was, she had a clear view of the wide avenue in front of the gate. Tails' name seemed to open all sorts of doors, but she had yet to want to abuse that power. It seemed too unkind. It felt a little too dangerous. Not the normal danger – she could cope with that – something a little deeper.

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave." It was that damn guard again.

"I'm not going anywhere." She stood to glare at him, and blind instinct saved her as the man drove a dagger towards her face. She staggered back, jerking her pistol from the holster, a Mercy II loaded with ID rounds, and pulled the trigger in a knee-jerk reaction. The shot penetrated his armour with ease, just below the heart, and the miniature fusion core ignited, burning him from the inside out. Then she pivoted at the waist, kicking his corpse from the edge of the gate.

"Tails, Tails are you there?" she practically shouted down the comm.

"Hey, calm down! It's still morning!"

"Tails, they have people in the guard! One of them just tried to kill me."

"Shit. You alright?" he sounded concerned, to say the least.

"Yea, those ID rounds work wonders."

"For fu- I was hoping we might be able to question him. Now I'm going to have to go round purging them individually to work out who's who."

"Sorry. He was trying to stab me, after all."

"Don't worry about it. It's already happened, waste of time for me to get agitated over it. Oh, and when it comes down to it, I'd rather you still be alive than have another traitor to condemn."

He was paying her compliments, completely oblivious to it. To him, that was a given, a point he was making – it almost made Fiona break down again. There was the hyperventilation, rapid heartbeat…she fought to keep it under control. "T-thanks." She managed to stammer back down the line.

"Something wrong?"

"N-no. Just catching…m-my breath."

"You were fine just moments ago. Are you _sure_ you're alright?" she couldn't tell him – she just couldn't. It would be just something else on his mind, and she just…couldn't. It wasn't possible, something stopped her every time. He had no idea…

With a physical effort that left her shaking slightly she fought the feeling back down. "I'm fine, Tails. Just a little off. What you asked…it isn't exactly…"

"Nice? Come on now, Fiona. Telera is having no problem cracking shots at the wall, and Lupin still hasn't completely curbed those homicidal tendencies of his. They realise it's the only way to make sure that our enemies go down, and stay down – why can't you understand that?"

"Tails-"

"One shot, Fiona. That's all I'm asking. You're going to have to realise that sometimes…killing is very much a necessity. It's what it comes down to. Not morals…not honour…really it's just survivability. Live when they don't. Either you sort that out or we aren't going to get along."

That did it. He was telling her to become a heartless killer so he might like her…no! She wasn't going to change herself, not like that. Tails was missing something somewhere along the line…new task. Fix Tails. Alright, she admitted, it was a little subjective, but that was what she was doing, wasn't it? As the other fox had said, you couldn't always be so delicate about things. "Then don't get along with me Tails." She finally replied. "I'm not going to turn emotionless on your say-so. Don't, Tails. I know you well enough to be working up to some little argument of yours that will prove your point beyond all reason. Fuck this – you want to kill the guy, do it yourself." And she shut the link, and begun to disassemble the sniper rifle.

Up in the palace proper, all Tails could manage to do was stare into his communicator, disbelief clearly visible on his features – staring eyes, confused expression…there was a brief moment, no more than an instant, where he had no idea what had just happened. Then his brain kicked in again and he started to get things straight. Where had _that_ come from? Alright, he conceded that he had been working on an argument the moment she had rebuked him, but she had been so _final_ about it. This wasn't a Sonic-maybe-I'll-do-it-later; this time, he could feel that no meant no.

It felt good. A little compromising, but he rarely got beaten or turned down. Well, he would have to make things up with Fiona later – if he, or she, ever wanted to – now he had other problems.

"Nicole?" he did have other problems.

"Yes?" the lynx couldn't materialise properly, using only a comm-link, so she spoke to him through that. "Is something wrong?"

"Yes. I was hoping you could help me fix it. I think it's pretty clear that though this war hasn't exactly lasted long, the zenith is imminently upon us. I need to sort some things out before that happens. Can you ask Sonic and Sally to come to my room? Make sure Sonic arrives first – I want to get him settled in."

"Bored of waiting?"

"Bored of them doing nothing about it. They'll probably wish they had, after this." He replied, his voice cold and dangerous. Nicole didn't question – it wasn't the smartest thing to do. She just obeyed, sending messages to the two others, one to Sonic, to discuss what he could do in the way of actual combat, one to Sally to discuss the political situation. From what she had heard, Nicole had surmised those were the most likely things to bring the two Mobians.

"Come in Sonic." The young kitsune smiled as he heard the knock, not even using his chaos sense to check who was there.

"How-"

"Don't, Sonic. You'll just want to tell me off if I answer. Before we get down to business, I have someone else coming. They're pretty closely linked with the royal family, and wanted in on this little chat."

"Who?"

"Now that would be telling."

"Tails? You said you wanted to talk?" the second voice came from outside the door, to the accompaniment of Sonic burying his head in his hands, swaying slightly from side to side in the chair he had so conveniently positioned himself in.

"Come in Sally. We have something important to discuss." Once again, Tails answered.

The squirrel-girl got the door open and was stepping inside as she saw Sonic, reclining in a state of slight panic. She froze mid-step.

"Now, now, Sally, don't be shy. Either you're both going to sit down and be civil about this or I'm going to drag you both screaming and kicking to a secure room plated with morganite, where you can sit and fester until you work out your differences there. What's it going to be?" he tilted his head slightly so he was looking directly into Sally's eyes, and he was sure she could see that he was quite serious. Slowly, cautiously, she closed the door and crossed the room to the other empty chair.

"Alright." Tails began, "I'm really getting bored of listening to you, hearing about you, and having to stop you two arguing day and night. I've already been civil, so I hope you see it as a credit to my personal restraint that I'm giving you one last chance before I finally snap."

"Tails…" Sally began in a wary voice, slightly trembling both from the stress and the calm politeness with which Tails was conducting himself. "it…it doesn't quite work…"

"It works exactly like _that_ Sally – oh yes, don't mistake this for me taking a shot at either you or Sonic. I'm trying to get things sorted so I can sleep at night. As I was saying…ah yes, from the way I see it, it works quite easily. You both have problems with each other – I've already been over this with Sonic to see if he would do anything, apparently too bone-idle to do so, and I credited you with too much initiative to do it yourself, Sally – anyway, you both have problems with each other, I don't see them going away anytime soon, so we're going to sort them out."

"Gah…Tails…" Sonic this time. "I thought we'd been through this…"

Tails moved, faster than Sonic could follow in his surprise, and only saw him solidify again as his un-gloved hand clamped around his neck and lifted him from the chair. Then, with a motion that felt more than it looked, he threw him into the bed-post. It wasn't a very hard throw, but Sonic broke through it with a dangerous-sounding crack. The fox quickly glanced at Sally. "Don't worry, I'll pay for that." Then back at Sonic. **"How many times must I drill it into your skull? We ****have**** been through this. You just haven't let it sink in, and I am ****_fucking tired of it._**** I warned you that you would be sorry if you force me to intervene, and this is now on your heads, both of you.**" he turned back to Sally as the hedgehog began to recover from the unexpected blow to the back of his head. "Speaking of which…don't think I wouldn't be willing to do the same to you. The only reason I haven't is because I'm a gentleman and you aren't an adept. If I tried that with you, I would most like already have crushed your spine and caved in your skull." He said it with an indifference that horrified her. There was no emotion in his eyes, just a numbing neutrality that left her somewhat paralysed. "Nothing to say? Come on, I'm trying to restrain myself."

"You're…you're out of line." She finally managed to whisper, barely audible, to Tails, who had not moved.

"I _don't care._ That's not the point of this, so don't pin it on me. I'm trying to get you too sorted, your differences resolved at least, you can shout at me however much you want, but the point remains that I'm actually trying to help, your both just being so bloody thick-skulled that you aren't seeing it." He casually walked back to where he sat, lowering himself back into the chair very calmly. "Now, Sonic, if you would be so kind to prise yourself from the splinters and retake your seat, we can actually make some progress."

He watched emotionlessly as Sonic did so. He wasn't particularly scared – or if he was, he had balls enough not to show it, but he did as his younger asked. When Tails finally spoke again, he sounded resentful, weary, defeatist.

"Thank you…I didn't want to do that, you know. I don't like to, but I was doing what I had to. Now, if I may – I don't hear any objections – I can surmise that the whole problem we have is one of speed. I've heard it way too often now. Sally, you get annoyed when Sonic runs in, not giving any thought to cause and effect. Sonic, you feel that Sally is taking too long. Any of you want to know what I think?"

There were a couple of shaky nods.

"I think that it doesn't actually matter. Sonic, I grew up alongside your way of life, but the analytical part of me sees sense in what Sally does, so I'm going to do my best to sort this out. Sally." He shifted his position in his seat so he could sit more comfortably facing her. "You're a queen, and considering your father never intended to let you onto a battlefield, you have sorted yourself out rather well. The plans you come up with have very rarely fallen below competent, but you plan too much. I see you at night, hear you sometimes, trying to work out every variable, every inconsistency in a plan right down to the nanoscopic detail. It doesn't work. We're still alive, we still make mistakes. It doesn't always work to…constrict us. You want to do that, get Nicole to lend you some of her legionnaires. Sonic, if you want to go bouncing in their heedless of your own life or that of others, go freelance, I don't care. You two are in a relationship now and for fuck's sake I am going to make it work for you."

"What did we get ourselves into?" Sonic moaned, glancing across at Sally, a brief glimmer of a smile flickering across her face. Tails didn't react, but already that was good. At least they were still willing to talk to each other. He might make some actual progress after all. Tails relaxed marginally.  
"Now, will you both come out from under your hands and talk a little? I don't mean to rush you, but I do have other things to do before the day finishes. I've drawn you both into a pretty awkward situation, but as I have reiterated, you did force my hand."

"There's a war on and you're trying to give us marital advice?" Sally said with more than a hint of surprise and awe. "Isn't it a bit of a bad time?"

"On the contrary, it is a supremely good time. The more people we get working together, the faster we can win this. On a different note, however…I'm not exactly lending much to the position, but I don't enjoy this. I know that if you don't sort your own differences out, I'm going to be called upon directly or otherwise to do this again and again. It will affect everyone significantly if we don't resolve things now."

"And-"

"No, don't talk to me, talk to her, Sonic – fuck." Tails cursed eloquently, flicking a gold ring out of his pocket and twirling it around one finger. He studied the ring in silence, and his expression changed from one of calmness to mind shock. "Sonic, Sally, the queen's chambers, _now._"

"Why? What's happening?" the edge in Tails' voice worried Sally, and Sonic came to his feet.

"I don't- _just __**move**__._" he wasn't allowing for an argument. He was giving an order. Sonic spun, getting the door halfway open before remembering Sally. In a spectacular double-take he jumped back into the room and gathered her up in his arms, giving Tails a nod then sprinting out the door. The fox watched him go, worry for them and those where they would be going. He didn't know exactly what was happening, but he could guess reliably, and the thought brought tears to his eyes.

* * *

The pair raced through corridors, to Sally it was a blur – she caught glimpses, fragments of people, the rich tapestries and artwork scattered around the palace, a stone bust of a previous king, a mural depicting a war, the rest were lost in that kaleidoscope of colour and noise, her ears too assailed by the snatches of conversation and the air itself as it rushed by at a speed she could not guess.

Sonic saw it all in crisp detail – the bust of king Max himself, the mural of the first great war, the noises too – the servants discussing preparations for the meal, another pair caught in some unimportant gossip about the many rumours always in circulation. He, unlike the squirrel he held in his arms, saw it clearly even at this speed, his mind running faster than most people expected, and his decisions were made not on whim, but as his subconscious determined the fastest way to the room he sought, making the decisions for him, leaving his waking mind to the rest. He could see it all, and to some extent how it applied to him, as he made his way with his fiancé to where the queen's private quarters. The door appeared, another carved sculpture in itself, flanked by a pair of guards – that was wrong. Something was off.

There wasn't time to think. The hedgehog took the door at a run, curling into a ball both to protect the princess he carried and to allow his spines to stand free, chaos-enhanced and hard as Megatal. A wooden door was no barrier, and the pair of wooden sculptures splintered loudly as Sonic crashed headlong into it, the polished hardwood bending and cracking all over, the hedgehog passing through unscathed as the guard dove aside to avoid having either one of the doors come down on their head. To his credit, the hedgehog could have stopped on a dime, such was his speed at halting his advance when he entered. Both now saw the reason for Tails' shock – two-dozen or so palace guard, all brandishing weapons at the queen, Alicia backed into a corner, a short sword held in strangely professional manner. Her attackers – they would be nothing else – faltered at the cacophony of noise behind them, and several spun to face Sonic and Sally, the pair trying to take in what they now saw.

Now, all other thoughts were abandoned. The arguments they were having, the way Tails had tried to sort them out, how they had refused to notice the problems…it didn't matter anymore. Not to Sally, at least. The guards were traitors. They were trying to kill her mother. It was only fair that she evened the numbers a bit. She fought blade to blade and tip to tip, up close where her own agility and athleticism counted for so much more than the bulk of the armour the guards all wore. Her entrance did not go unnoticed – half a dozen of the attackers turned to push against her, but they had been the ones at the back of the press, trying to get forward. The queen still fought the rest, the remaining oppressors unperturbed by the princess, though they should have been more aware of her.

Blades lunged and Sally backpedalled from their reach, her own sword catching on the outermost guard's hand guard and she took the advantage from it, a flick driving the weapon into the floor with the sound of splintering wood. He grunted from behind his mask, hands leaving the sword and going for his knife as the princess spun, her foot driving out at head-height and shattering the visor of his helmet, filling his face with glass shards. He fell, screaming.

Another man took his place, driving in with a down stroke meant to split her skull in two. But she was not there – she moved aside gracefully, allowing him to overbalance and stumble forward enough for her to drive her own sword backwards into the back of his chestplate. He fell in a puddle of his own blood, falling silent after a few moments.

The third didn't even get the chance to fight back; he had seen the deaths of his comrades and he faltered in that crucial moment, and had his windpipe slit by the very tip of the shortsword. He staggered, clutching his throat and falling to his knees and Sally used him as a vaulting post, jumping off his head and kicking the next one in the teeth. He sliced through the air, a clumsy, wild strike offset by the pain. It missed by yards and he was killed by Sally's fist driving through his already broken visor and finishing the job her foot had started. Cracking his nose and driving the bone into his brain.

It didn't matter how many she killed – there were plenty to ensure that they could prolong her journey through the crowd long enough to complete the task, but she fought anyway. Battling through the red mist clouding her vision from anger and the minor wounds she had received already.

It did not mean that the queen was going without a fight. She fought professionally, even in spite of the position she found herself in. Retaliation was not possible, the dozen blades bearing down on her drawing on every ounce of her skill to stop them getting through. Even so, her white dress was marred by cuts and red stains where blades had found their way through her guard for even a fraction of a second, and her strength sapped from her with each passing moment, her thoughts now divided between her safety and that of Sally's.

Of course, both squirrels were embroiled in the combat, they didn't see a shadow as it detached from the balcony doors, and before it coalesced into something corporeal, it hurled a series of other somethings across the room, and watched without moving as they thudded, one by one, into the queen at various angles. Whatever had just happened, it had occurred in less than a second, without Sonic having time to react. After that, he did not hesitate. Sally was with the queen as the 'guards started in a hasty retreat, but Sonic could deal with neither. He started to move the moment he felt able, through the fleeing guards – one on occasion, literally – towards the dark figure as he moved back out the way he came. Sonic followed, barrelling into him, hands grasping for a hold on the figure and finding them, carrying him away from the palace walls…and off the balcony edge. The run turned into a plummet, and though Sonic was sure he would be able to tank the damage, he was also pretty damn certain that whoever he took with him couldn't.

Bastard was about to pay for this.


	12. Chain Breaker ii

The wind exploded into his face as Sonic leapt from the balcony, dragging his unfortunate victim with him. That victim had just made a grave error in their judgement – _they had tried to kill Alicia._ They had attempted to murder the queen, along with their cohorts in the Royal Guard…for all he knew, Alicia was already dead. A life for a life, wasn't that how it was done? Revenge wasn't the best way back, but it was a start. Sonic pushed off and up from his target, dragging the meshing black cloak with him. There were the sounds of tearing as gravity and Sonic met in a brief duel, the hedgehog going up, taking the cloak with him, and the occupant going down – Sonic won. The black shroud fluttering away from him, the assailant unfurled six arms. Sonic's eyes widened slightly in surprise. He had jumped for a spider? He couldn't let him just fall. As well as having that web-thing, they had notorious reputations for surviving long falls.

He let gravity take control again, and dropped after his opponent. The spider reacted in kind, pistols snatched from holsters by all arms, and six triggers were pulled. Sonic found himself dropping towards a wall of lead, and breaking through it, chaos-toughened skin all but cracking the bullets themselves. After that, the spider did not even bother fighting back. He saw the futility of it, and what was about to happen, but he was not afraid. There was no point in it – it would accomplish nothing, so his feeling was of supreme indifference as spines met skin, and Sonic ripped through the spider mid-way down the side of the palace. A thin streak of blood trailed after him, and he realised that his back was smeared with the same cloying red liquid. Despite his predicament he found time to shudder as a wave of revulsion ran through him. It wasn't the sight of blood that gave him concern, but he didn't like being covered in it.

The ground hurried up to meet him, and he curled into a ball once more, and muttered something within the protective casing of his own body.  
"Blast shield, fifty rings." The unique shield rose around him, a sphere of rock traced over by lines of magma, and an upgrade to the standard ring-shield. The fox had been very careful in the planning, and somehow managed to make it opaque from the outside, while transparent on the inside.

Sonic struck the ground at approximately four-hundred miles per hour, and the concrete rippled, visibly _rippled_ out form the point of impact. The shield cracked, taking the impact in on itself, and split apart in a shower of white ash, settling softly on and around Sonic as he uncurled himself and rolled out of the way of the corpse as it hit the ground behind him. One of the palace guard stood nearby, and he came to attention as he saw whom was before him. He didn't manage to move two steps before Sonic turned on him.

"Who's side are you on?" he snapped at the man.

"Sir-"  
_"Who's s_

_ide are you on? Answer the fucking question!"_ Sonic shouted as a primal rage threatened to overrun him. He didn't think he had ever been as angry, and he didn't know how he was, at the moment.

"I serve the crown, sir." The guard mustered a reply, a little taken aback by Sonic's behaviour.

"Then get someone down to find out who this is, and make sure they're loyal too. Some of you bastards decided to switch sides, and you're going to find out what you just did!" he didn't allow the guard to say anything more. He fired off in the direction of the palace gates, hoping to run off the anger that was trying to break into him. He cleared the gates in a jump, not wanting to wait for the guard to open, and powered into the palace proper towards the queen's chambers. It took another minute, and by the time he arrived there was no question of what had just happened.

Tails was there, and judging by some of the fairly sizeable holes in the guards, he had arrived before Sally had finished. There was blood, mostly in puddles around the guard, but Sally was near-covered in it too. He assumed it was not her own, for she was quite capable of muttering a string of violent oaths and curses in the middle of the tears he could hear but not see. He made to cross the room to her, stopped as Tails put one hand on his shoulder and whispered into his friend's ear.

"Be careful of your next words. She's distraught more than anything. Make sure that the silver lining to this is your reunion." It barely rose to a whisper and then moved past Sonic into the hallway. He paused behind him, and spoke again, his voice loud enough for the other two to hear. "I have to attend to the council of war. I'll return, but there's nothing I can do here." Then he left, and Sonic was alone with Sally, the dead their witness.

The blue hedgehog let the silence linger for a few seconds more, as he mentally debated how and what he would say. After a little while he started to pick his way through the blood and bodies towards Sally and the prone figure of the queen. He didn't have to look to know she was dead.  
"I got him, Sal. The fall didn't agree with him." He started in a low voice, his best attempt at sounding solemn. She didn't reply. "There wasn't anything I could-" he tried to explain, and she cut him off.

"Don't say that." Her voice was flooded with the tears and her own sorrow, with the razor edge that accompanied grief. "There's always something."

"There wasn't." he wavered.

"There was!" she snapped, spinning up towards him. He grabbed her shoulders, steadied her.

"There wasn't! Did you see how many of those things he threw? I- we couldn't' save her. I did what I could instead. He won't be able to try again; he won't be able to try it on you."

"That's not the point…I can take care of myself."

"And do you want an assassin breathing down your neck? I didn't want him to be. But like you said, that's not the point, but there's no point in crying over Alicia now. It's not going to bring her back, and it won't help you if you can't think straight for the tears."

"Sonic…" she buried herself in his arms. "I'm…"

"Don't say anything. Come on, we'll go back to my room. Talk things over. Or you can just cry on my shoulder, if it makes you feel any better." It didn't seem the time, but Sonic offered a silent prayer to his youth. He had been a bit of a dater before he met Sally and sobered up a little, and by virtue was at least competent with dealing with unhappiness. He began to lead her away, and something made him stop. "Tails?" he spoke into the comm.

"Yea?" He sounded subdued. Seemed even the toughest was affected by it.

"Can you get someone up here to sort things out? We don't want the queen lying in the middle of a score of dead traitors, do we?"

"I'll get someone on it now. Is Sally alright?"

"We're going back to my room. Talk things over."

"Good choice. Oh, and Sonic? Try to avoid mentioning the war. Or Sally's father. If the subject comes up, talk about it but don't start it yourself." The link closed with a soft whir. Sally practically lying on his shoulder he took her back to his rooms, walking, the slowest he could ever remember moving.

* * *

"Antoine is pulling back. It's now or never. I want to carry the motion for proposal of emergency powers delivered onto me." Back the conference room, Tails was moving forward with his plans.

"Don't we need the king's opinion on this?"

"The king will no doubt be in mourning over the loss of his wife. He is emotionally compromised and so not fit to make decisions. In this situation the council may be called upon to decide in his stead." Tails knew politics, and he knew the king.

"Must you use this day in such a way?"

"I'm citing correct law and using the situation to my advantage. We will most certainly lose were we to all sit in mourning for the duration of the month. I too feel for the loss of the queen, but we must win this now, or would you rather she died for nothing?"

Of the thirty-seven councillors, only four voted against, being stoic supporters of the king. Another two abstained under the pretence of indecision. "Excellent." Tails congratulated them, ignoring the angry glares of the opposition. "Then my first command is to withdraw all military forces to the palace." He didn't need to wait for the ripple of disagreement and horror to die down before they began to bicker amongst themselves. "The enemy force's goal is to take the city and rule over it. They will not destroy it nor will they harm those who live within it, but speaking in military terms we cannot hold it. We fall back to the palace – it's effectively a bastion – where we can use to full extent our elites."

"You mean _your_ elites." It was one of those who had spoken against him. "Your little splinter cell of freedom fighters."

"I'd sooner trust them over the Royal Guard now, or have you forgotten it was the Royal Guard who made an attempt on the queen's life, and freedom fighters that came to her defence? Granted they failed to protect the queen, but now all of the assailants are corpses. Oh, and as a footnote, do you have any chaos adepts on the guard? Last time I checked I couldn't sense any. Including me, I have two. The choice is not yours to make, anyway. I'm pulling our forces back." His hand went to his comm.

"Nicole, send out commands to all of our forces. The original plan to relocate within the city is being voided. Order all remaining forces back to the palace instead. Further orders will be issued to them when they arrive."

"Got it." The AI replied calmly. The orders were probably already being sent. Nicole was efficient like that. "I take it your including the freedom fighters?"

"Course. It wouldn't do to have our best roaming around while the rest of us sit in here ducking every time a shell fires off. Just get them all back here ,we can make plans and amendments when they get here."

"I assume you have a plan?"

"I fucking well hope so, or we're all screwed."

* * *

As expected, the majority of freedom fighters were the first to arrive. Sonic and Sally were absent, and Antoine was directing his forces, so command fell to Tails, and he briefed a very solemn, introspective group of Amy, Telera, Retis, Lupin, and Fiona.

"This is the endgame, everyone. Shitty terms of engagement if you ask me, two of our team are otherwise indisposed, and we're running out of room."

"What's the actual situation?" Lupin snarled. He was affected heavily by the loss of the queen – two years previous he had served a couple of years as her champion.

"I've recalled all available troops to the palace, under the principle that we really can't maintain the city in any real semblance of a line. The streets are too twisted to allow any proper defence to be set up, and as yet the palace is the only area inside the city with a ready wall for us."

"So you still don't get it." Fiona looked away as Tails shifted to see her properly.

"If there's something I'm missing, enlighten me." He fixed her with something that was not quite a stare, but she felt it was just as penetrating. A few seconds was all it took for her resolve to crumble.

"All the people. You're abandoning them to those streaming through the gates, and I have a feeling they don't really care how many innocents die under their guns."

"We stay out there and the city falls, Fiona. How many die then?"

"You said it yourself, they want to take the city, not raze it. If we just let them in, we would only lose a few – isn't that it? You're so concerned about the losses?"

He watched her with a weary eye. "I'm not going to win this, am I?" he sighed slowly. "Fine- we know that the shelling won't begin while enemy forces are too close to the city, and the day is drawing to a close. They customarily begin at sunrise, so to gain accuracy. That gives us until sundown to destroy them, yes?"

Fiona nodded slowly, trying to guess what he was getting at.

"Then go and do it. You five, a small team all trained in all forms of stealth and subterfuge, hit their artillery before it gets a chance to fire. That eliminates the chance of it killing innocent civilians. The traitor soldiers won't touch them – they can see what they're shooting at. Does that satisfy you?"

She nodded, with an air of satisfaction he found vaguely irksome, on top of his own irritation that he had once again been beaten. In such short a time, too! Girls…still couldn't get the hang of it. They always found the stubbornness to resist against him. No such thing as perfect logic, he chided himself silently.

"Then go."

_"And you?"_ Telera signed.

"I'm going to stay here and keep the defences organised." The younger fox shrugged. "You wanted to break cannons, go do it yourself. It's going to be here the army is going to march on, I intend to meet it guns blazing."

"You're heartless sometimes." Fiona objected.

"No, I'm practical. Go, if you don't have anything better to do that argue and slow me down." He rose and left his room, where they had held the impromptu briefing session. The others watched him leave, some with indifference, others with a little regret – Fiona included – but she felt a little angry at Tails and herself, and stupid for being so bloody defensive. Privately she cursed, the possibility of losing Tails drifting into her mind.

"So, how're we going to do this?" she asked the others.

Retis shrugged. "You suggested it, you lead."

Fiona furrowed her brow for a moment, thinking carefully. "Do we have to destroy the artillery themselves?"

"How do you mean?" It was Retis again.

"It would take all our explosives and more to destroy all their artillery units individually. Do we have any idea where they get the shells, or how we can locate it?"

"Take me to one of the shell landings." Lupin stepped in. "Get me the scent of the shells, or something associated with them, I can track them down."

"Sure about that?"

"I'm certain of it. I'm a wolf." He replied, as if that explained everything. Fiona shrugged – she didn't have another idea.

"If you and Telera find one of the sites, me, Amy and Retis can work on finding a way out through the fighting. Sound good?"

_"S'alright with me."_ Telera gave in assent, giving Lupin a hug that suggested a little too much. She wouldn't go any further on it – Fiona knew her too well already – but she did this sort of thing from time to time. Lupin had a thing for her, and it was her way of showing that things weren't hopeless, just arduous.

"That's settled, then. I just hope I know what I'm doing." She shook her head in some form of confusion. "I fucking hope I know what I'm doing."

* * *

"Sir, they're retreating."

"Surely the realise there's nowhere to go? Are you sure they have not surrendered?" Turk raised an eyebrow. Retreating further into a city was no tactical advantage. It stopped at the middle – there was nowhere they could go. If it were him, he would hold the walls for the sake of manoeuvrability. Either they were being outrageously stupid, or they knew something he didn't. He was putting stock in the latter – Antoine had shown a great deal of tactical expertise thus far, including the war at the gates, and though he would hope for the man doing something foolish for once, it would be uncharacteristic. Something was wrong, and he didn't like it.

"Ve haven't received any reports of that sort of activity. All we're getting back is ze withdraw of their forces from the walls, and tzey can't be going anywhere aside from further into ze city." Myro replied with a certainty. "I cannot understand it."

"There's nothing else we can do if we want to take the city anytime soon. Sitting out here won't do us any favours – we move ahead as planned, and hope our contacts inside the palace can alert us to any new occurrences."

"Our last report was zat ze queen…she is dead." There was a quiet tone to Myro's voice. Though she was the enemy, it still hurt.

"Poor lady, but she stood in the way." Turk didn't care. It wasn't his problem, and he had never really had many dealings with Alicia. To him the royal family only slowed the progress that should have been made so long ago – that was why he had risen to Geoffrey's cause when the call had been given. He wanted progress, and would do whatever was needed to make it happen.

"How are things moving forward, general?" Turk spun on his heel. Geoffrey…again. He managed to refrain from snarling at him, but could not help but narrow his eyes at the conniving little man. He wouldn't be able to cling on to power for long…it would be easy enough to dethrone him when the time came.

"They're in retreat. As of now we are trying to determine why."

"What's to understand? Why not just pursue them?" Geoffrey pressed, a note of irritation in his voice. Turk took a couple of steps closer, his manner threatening, and the skunk shrank back as he saw his error.

"And risk another error, like the one you led to before? This is a battle, and think twice before you attempt to give me advice on strategy. You are not a military man, so do not act like one." Even his voice was imposing, his manner, and his stance, stern and hinting at violence.

"As you were then. I was asking a question, general." Geoffrey brushed the matter aside with apparent ease. Another thing that infuriated the general – if Geoffrey didn't like something, he just pushed it away, refused to deal with it.

"No, you were trying to give me orders. Now go back to your petty power debates and leave me to the real work." Turk wanted to get rid of him as fast as he could. The mere fact of him being around always seemed to bring trouble.

"Excuse me? Power debates?" the falcon smiled. He had managed to score one against Geoffrey. Now time to excuse him from the field.

"Yes, now go, before I decided to take more direct action to remove you from my theatre. Your usefulness is limited and invaluable, but not unique. There are replacements, many of which you brought with you." He left. People tended to do that when reminded of their commodity and mortality. He had of course, been bluffing. Most people shared the skunk's lust for power, but a political lethality that he had to admit was rare. Nonetheless…he was still disposable. You didn't need politicking if there was no such thing as election, and they needed to secure their power somehow – conveniently making a one-party state just clarified things. They had the council worked out, the matter of succession would solve itself…he couldn't see a downside.

He began to walk, a purposeful, intimidating stride that seemed to propel rather than carry, past the supply caches and towards the wall where his men traded fire with the retreating forces. As he moved his hands went to his weapon – a Vulcan heavy pistol, a gift from the Echidna when he was still alongside with the loyalists – and loaded it without looking. It wouldn't do to go into an active fire zone without a working weapon. He no longer needed to see it as he moved, finding both the weapon and a clip and locking the two together – a few moments and he was moving with a weapon raised at his shoulder, guarded, but not hostile.

A group of idle soldiers saluted him as he passed, and he stopped in his tracks and turned to look at them. "Why aren't you at the front line?" his query bordered on a threat, but remained mild-mannered and still questioning.

"Heard you wanted to avoid wasting ammo when you got the snipers up front, figured we'd come back, cool down, rest a bit. No point staying all tense and worried if we've got a fight in the city, sir."

Turk smiled appreciatively. The soldier had answered rightly by him, and it was enough. He punched the closest on the shoulder. Enough to hurt just a little. "Good choice, but next time make sure I know that you're withdrawing. For now fill me in on what's happening and I might let you off for disobeying orders."

"Y-yes sir." The man stammered. Disobeying orders could result in court-marshal in normal circumstances, but they weren't in normal circumstances, so Turk improvised on the matter. For his soldiers, disobeying an order counted the same as desertion or deviation, and the penalty for that was a summary execution. "Course, we don't know all of it, but from guys comin' and goon' we heard that fire's been slowly bleedin' away, but we 'ain't been doing that many kills. Reckoning is we've taken more deads than we've given."

"What are the casualties like?"

"Don't know, sir. I got told we were getting shot at, didn't get told how much."

"Hmmph. So I have to find out myself. Get your weapons ready, we're marching into the city soon." He began to walk away, continuing his journey.

"Does this mean I'm off the hook?"

"I haven't decided yet. There's still time, provided Mobotropolis doesn't get the better of you."


	13. Chain Breaker iii: Remove the Head

Up to now, things were going remarkably well. Lupin's sense of smell was acute enough to detect the scents he needed from one of the many bomb-sites, and the enemy army did not have numbers enough to completely encircle the city. Thus the group of five had found little difficulty in sneaking out through one of the access ways.

"Tails, we're out."

"Good. Look sharp, there's a group moving around about half a mile ahead of you, only a scouting party but big enough to worry about."

Fiona smiled. In spite of his earlier remark that it was nothing to do with him, Tails still wanted to help them. He wasn't as heartless as he pretended to be. "Thanks; they're showing up on the radar. We don't have the kit to deal with all the stations themselves, so we're going to try and target their ammunition stocks instead."

"One can lead to the other. The energy cores in their ammunition isn't the most stable, so the ammo dumps are quite likely near the positions themselves. You don't want to have to keep carting around unstable material – the longer it remains stationary, the better."

"What? So we kick it around?"

"I wouldn't recommend getting within one hundred yards if you plan to make it explode. The shells have a limited explosive range, but the shockwave could crush your lungs, and the combined blast…doesn't bear thinking about. You might want to make sure Retis doesn't attempt any unnecessary heroics."

This was their advantage. Of course, the separatist army had some of the best weapons in the world – Tails had designed them and you couldn't get much better than that – but it was also quite a huge blunder. Once Tails had a design, he didn't forget it. As she sat in the shade of the massive wall, leaning against the bark of one of the forest trees, she guessed that Tails could probably rattle off every constructional detail to everything he had ever produced, if he so wished to. Tails knew how to make his own equipment, and so equally well knew how to cripple it, and the female vulpine was about to use it to her full advantage. "I'll make sure he knows." She replied with a soft laugh. He was joking of course, despite the serious element. Retis was thankfully one of the more cool-headed ones.

"Oh, and Fiona?"

"Yea?" she felt, for some reason, a little breathless as she said the word.

"Now you're out, don't come back into the city until I give an all-clear. Cornered rats fight desperately, and we don't want them to mistake your kill-team for a second force joining the combat. All sorts of things can happen that neither of us would like to happen. Oh yes, and I almost forgot. I meant to apologise for earlier. I'll listen next time you say no."

"Thanks Tails, that means a lot." It really did. A bit of work was needed, but maybe she could get him to be less encased in that steel shell of his.

"Are you sure you're up for this? You sound a bit emotional."

For a moment it was fear. It sounded, in her mind at least, that he had got an idea of what was going on, and he was still with Amy…it wouldn't work out. "No, n-no, I'm absolutely fine, you not very Mobian, sometimes though Tails. We can talk more when I get back."

"Not Mo- yes, you're on a mission. I'm going to have to go, after all, I'm sitting in the cauldron here. Nicole should be able to act in capacity for me, and send word when you're done. If somethings goes wrong…find somewhere you can hold, and wait. Tell me and then wait."

"And get surrounded?"

"Better than running." You could almost _hear_ the shrug in his voice. "Even surrounded you can't be flanked. Running just exposes you. Trust me, hunker down if you end up in a bad situation and help will come. I promise you that, all of you." Fiona began to frame a confused answer as she remembered the others were there too. If they had been listening, they didn't show it.

"Good luck in there, Tails."

"You too, Fi." And he was gone. Fiona was with the others now. She looked towards them, milling around, checking gear, throwing remarks at each other. Would it be enough? They were sneaking through a forest full of hostiles, to hopefully cripple their artillery batteries, but they had no idea how they would do it or how many would come back. It was a gamble to pay off.

"Let's go, then." She told them, checking her own weapon in the process – she still used the Judgement and it's variants – before she led them off into the woods, the five outcasts.

* * *

Tails watched the battle play out from the highest tower he could find. It irked him that he couldn't be down there fighting alongside the others – blasted politics. He didn't trust anyone else with the job and besides, he, aside from Sally, was the only one really qualified for the task. He had no doubt a few well-place chaos spears, a chaos blast or two…they would end the conflict, but neither the destruction of the city or the igniting of the surrounding forest were particularly tantalising side-effects.

He would have to do something interesting before this was over, he decided. He couldn't go on like this. He'd get bored if he didn't do _something._  
He glanced at his HUD. Five o'clock, the withdraw was almost complete. All that would remain at the walls would be the skeleton crew, by now. It was time to enjoy the aplomb with which Antoine would no doubt reposition his remaining forces. Absent-mindedly he flicked out a ring and began tossing it, without watching the ring flashing against the sunlight that blasted the spot where he rested against the rail. He was gloveless again – he didn't feel the need to wear them anymore. As a kid he had been more conscious of them, but back then he had been worried about everything; living as a supposed 'freak' in Mobian youth had provided certain benefits. People had kept their distance, left him to his own thoughts. Only Sonic had really been ignorant enough to get in close.

_"Hey, what you got there?" even at twelve, Sonic was practically a hero. Tails was in one of the foster homes, after his discovery alone in the northern forests._

_"Just leave me alone." His reply had been somewhat miserable. He didn't like people getting that close to him then. Sonic just hadn't listened. That stubborn belief in his own rightness about almost anything._

_"Hey, I'm just looking!" he scooped up the little device and begun turning it over and over in his gloved hands, peering into every part of it. "What's it do, anyway?"_

_"What do you care?" At eight, Tails had been very defensive about everything. It had taken some time for him to relax – eight more years, in fact.  
"I'm just curious, little-" that had been the mistake._

_"Don't call me little!" Tails had snapped angrily, but despite the piping child's voice, it had been surprisingly adult, cold, and Sonic's sardonic smile had flickered for a moment at the curt remark. He had given the little reassembled toy back, with remarkable speed, actually._

_They had really hated each other back then, for about a year. He made frequent visits to that orphanage; his casual, if obnoxious and ridiculously blunt attitude had all but had the others fawning over him, but not Tails, and the blue hedgehog had seen it as a challenge. He had dogged his steps, trying to get in his way or drag him into the stuff he was doing with the others…Tails had fought through it all. He had proved to be stubborn, the only challenge Sonic had really ever found insurmountable._

Things had changed so much since then. Tails had grown up, Sonic had mellowed out a bit. A few heated discussions, one fairly brief but intense fight between the two had settled things in the four years after that, Sonic stopped trying to change Tails, Tails begun listening to others.

"Hey, Mr Nostalgic, wake up, you got a life to run, ya know." Nicole. She _did_ have opportune moments to interrupt, it turned out.

"How did you know I was-"

"You have that look. Saw it through your display." A little 8-bit avatar of Nicole gave him a wave and smile from the corner of the green HUD. "Come on, you can't lounge up here all day sifting through all that junk in your head, you've-"

"I take it you didn't know that the queen is dead, then?" he replied in a detached tone, cutting across the preamble she was sure to deliver. "We're all a bit reclusive at the moment."

"Oh, shit. I- when?" It affected Nicole too, then.

"Midday today. Sally seems to be hanging onto her mind by a thread, and Sonic's trying to keep her from breaking up. We need her now, more than ever, and I would take it as a personal favour if you didn't interfere. Fiona took the other four out of the city to see what she can do about the enemy artillery, so that leaves me, Ant and Bunnie as the only leader capacities. We're a little hard-pressed. How are things at your end?"

"Not bad now." Nicole replied, recovering from her blunder and eager to shift the topic onto something a little less delicate, "They sent bees at us, so whoever it is has contacts in one of the hives. I don't think any they sent at us are actually still living. Rotor and I were pretty efficient." She omitted the part about the quarrelling. "Just doing clean-up at the moment."

"In that case, see if you can get messages onto phones and billboards in Mobotropolis, make 'em look official, make sure the civilians know this place is about to become a live-fire zone."

"You backing up then?"

"It's called a tactical withdrawal, Nicole. If you're going to criticise my methods, at least have the courtesy to sound like it. Anyway, yes. We can't realistically hold the walls this way, so we're moving back to the main gate. I just came up to get a breather but keep track of what's going on. Ant knows how to handle his forces, better than I do, I admit."

"So the mighty Tails is fallible, then? Is there any point in me trying to get help out to you?"

"Honestly at this point, I wouldn't bother. The last dregs of our forces are pulling back as we speak, and the separatists are going to be following hot on their heels. They're not going to give you a chance to deploy any effective countermeasures. Even if you could, I'd rather you didn't." his tone shifted to a heavier, weary voice, "I've done fuck-all fighting so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing the look on Geoff's face before I tear his face off."

"Geoffrey? I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He did have that power complex. Well, anyway, if I can't offer any help, I'll keep back here and just stay on comm. Good luck out there, Tails."

He smiled, in spite of the grim situation. "Don't think I'll need it, but thanks anyway. Ah- I almost forgot, we need to have a long talk when I get back. There are a couple of issues I'd like to get cleared, but now isn't really the time."

"By your leave."

It didn't feel right to reply. He had seen the messages Rotor had sent him – angry ones, mostly, at the programming Tails had changed, edited, made Nicole so dangerous and uncompromising. The reports were troubling. Not really because of what it spoke of Nicole doing, but because it wasn't _him._ He hadn't touched Nicole's data servers, but clearly Rotor thought he had. There was something going on behind his back, someone was messing around behind his back…but Rotor was the only other person Nicole would let near her systems – anyone else, bang, _dead._

Fuck. That would be a problem.

He chose not to reply, and stalked back from the tower rail and back inside, down the spiralling stairwell and back into the castle proper. Almost immediately as he set foot into the corridors there were half a dozen ministerial aids clamouring around him, shouting ever louder in an attempt to get their problem heard over the others.

He clapped his hands together, bright green sparks fountaining from them. "Silence!" he demanded in a commanding voice, and the infernal chattering died down. "I don't have time for your bloody ideals at the minute, talk to me when hell freezes over, or I start giving a shit, whatever comes latest. I'm going to finish this war so if you want to live get out of my way and let me get on with my work." The last piece of advice was greeted with a set of blank stares. He couldn't be bothered with being any more courteous. He grabbed the nearest two with gloveless hands and pushed them aside roughly, marching through the gap it created and leaving the hum of chaos energy in the air as he rounded a corner.

He didn't need them to fuck around with him – he had his own issues.

_"You can't push it all away…it's still a world out there. People start giving me hard times…I run. S'all there is to it."_

He pushed the memory away – Sonic again. He had been eleven at the time, still his isolated self, and Sonic had once again tried to drag him out of it. Five years later, Fiona was trying the same thing, albeit through a different route. Maybe it wouldn't kill him to listen for once.

He started, looking up from the floor as his concentration waned, and surprised to see he had emerged from the castle onto the adjoining wall, where soldiers trooped along it hefting stationary weapons and crates of ammunition with them, orders shouted to and fro from officers in addition to the washing conversations chattering through the comm, and Tails began to pace down the lines, waves from soldiers keeping him grounded in reality but nonetheless introspective as he searched for Antoine.

Five minutes of fruitless searching as can be expected, yielded no sign of the veteran general, and he was verging on repeating his journey and re-entering the castle in search of the general someplace else when he was hailed by someone a little further on. He straightened his stance and picked up pace a little, marching swiftly to the source of the voice.

A reptilian…salamander. The greenish scales, extended face and speech extension he had heard when he had shouted his name.

"Am I to take it you ssseek the general?" the man asked, his tone demanding but respectful – he knew his place, good. That would make things a little easier.

"Yes, I take it you know where I can find him?"

"He goesss to the council…to inform them of thisss predicament." The salamander's tongue flicked idly. "If it'sss any help, I am acting in his ssstead until he returnsss."

"Your name?"

"Hartley, sssir."

"What are you doing with the defences?"

"I'm trying to ssspread us evenly, to ensssure that there are no cracksss in the defence."

"Then you must never have been in a siege before, or the suppression of a city. I was younger then, but I saw Robotnik when he took Old Mobotropolis and made it into Robotropolis. He made a statement, marched his forces up to the palace gates and cracked them open with his latest super weapon. They're going to do the same here, but this time with my technology, which is just as good. I want the best anti-armour soldiers you can get watching the gate for when shit hits the fan. Make sure whatever they bring to bear on us goes up in a cloud of metal and petrol, while I break up this little rebellion of theirs."

"What exactly did you have in mind?" Hartley's eyes narrowed as he begun to get what Tails was going on about.

"I intend to show them exactly what happens when they get on my bad side." He flexed his claws, watching Hartley with a blank expression, "A rebellion tends to dissipate quickly if the leader becomes a cloud of ash. Oh, and a word to the wise: Don't get in my way. _I_ know who I'm hitting, chaos powers don't give a shit." Once again, he gave no time for a reply, spinning on his heel and stalking off further down the line towards the gate itself. He didn't pause again in his walk, he insulated himself from the questions or calls from the soldiers.

When he reached where he best judged was the centre of the massive gate, he paused and leant against the edge, content to wait.

"Tails hun, that you?" the voice made him look round, and he managed a thin smile for Bunnie as she rested next to him, robotic limbs making sharp thuds on the concrete. "Ain't see you all day, hun, you ain't hidin' from us, are ya?"

"No…just…I've got some shit I have to work out." He didn't sound convincing.

"Is it anythin' do to with Alicia?"

"No…well, yes…but…" he felt his resistance crack slightly.

"This ain't you, hun. You're always right awn it, you're the one makin' the choices. What's wrong? Ah won't say a thing to none o' the others."

"Your concern is touching, but it's something I have to work out for myself."

"Ya sure?" Bunnie pressed.

"Yes, I'm sure. Maybe once I get things sorted in my own head I can talk about it. Things are changing a little too rapidly more my tastes, so I want to lay them out and go through it one by one. Try as I might, I can't do everything." He shrugged unconsciously. "I'm putting this rebellion down tonight, as the first thing on that list. You're welcome to watch."

"Ya got somethin' in mind?" She replied with a sly grin.

"You could say that." He looked out over the city lit up by the afternoon sun. "It's pretty blunt, but should work. All it really requires is that their general is near the front of his force when he shows up."

Bunnie shuffled around slightly, rearranging herself into a more comfortable position. "Ya sound like Sonic there, hun, just a lil' more technical."

"Ugh…listen, I just want to have a few minutes to myself here, alright? I'm not exactly relishing what I'm about to do, though I will put on a bit of a show, and I really need to think."

"Sure, hun. Come find me if ya need to talk." She whispered, then he heard her metal feet clanking loudly as she moved away, down past him and away along the wall.

_Fuck._

* * *

Fiona shouldered aside another low branch with a rough tug and low curse as it flapped back in her face. She pushed it aside again, taking a little more care to break it out of the way with unfortunately quite an audible crack. "Fuck." She mumbled, waiting in silence for any sign of approach. When none came, she peered back behind to the other four. "You're seeing this?" a series of nods were there reply.

'This' was in fact the edges of an old village, and her HUD was picking up more targets than she wanted to count. Rows of bright blue barrels jutted at an angle from the middle of the village, and after a few seconds of waiting a thunderous chorus of blasts rang through the forests, the artillery position disgorging another salvo of shells into the sky, as they ignited and begun their massively-lengthened arc towards the city. From what she could see, they were carting shells from a small compound of renovated barns to the guns themselves – this was the only position, so it was logical they simple kept all their shells there. Setting them off…

"They're keeping them in the hangers, if I'm right." She mumbled back to the others.

"So, what? We blow it up and get out?" Retis shrugged nonchalantly.

"We're trying to be stealthy here, jackass." Lupin growled, punching him in the shoulder.

"Yea, so? Couple of them judgement rounds through the side, cook off the entire lot, no sweat from us."

"Ah yes, 'cause we all want a _fucking army trying to bite our hinds off when we get away._" Fiona lavishly coating the statement with sarcasm. "Come on, you're more patient than this."

"Maybe I don't care for this sneaking about crap, alright?" he huffed. "I'm a fighter, I run in fists punching – I don't sneak around the side-lines, in case you hadn't noticed. I'm not exactly cut for this."

"Yea, and we don't want to see you get killed doing something needlessly heroic. Tails said so."

"So what the hell am I here for them?" he threw his arms up in exasperation.

"In case this whole thing does go up in smoke, then you get to break skulls for us." Lupin joked at his colleague. "If you're really pissed about not doing anything, we can go maul some trees after we get back."

"If you wanna make this a one on one, just say so." Retis shook one fist in a mocking warning. "Anyone have an idea how we're going to do this then? I'm not waiting for them to rust into decommission, if that's what you're all hoping."

"We need to find quick, quiet ways of dispatching the guards. The Judgement could kill them, but gives us away as well." Fiona explained to no one in particular.

_"I've got the range and speed to kill them silently, but it's still too slow. I wouldn't be able to kill them all before one was discovered."_

"Wait, how many could you kill, if one of us could get through?" Retis asked, an idea forming in his head. Telera held up three fingers silently. "Then that decides it. You punch a hole, I'll follow it through."

"What are you on about?" Lupin growled. "That's suicidal, you idiot."

"So? I can punch through walls that thin, get to the ammunition, and once I'm there, I'm otherwise safe. They won't shoot me for fear of causing the detonation themselves, so they have to get me up close. I'll just keep hammering at the shells and anyone who comes near until they go off."

"Are you _trying_ to get yourself killed?"

"No, but it's not as if we have a great deal of choice. Either we sit here and let Mobotropolis get pounded further by artillery waiting until we come up with a suitably fool proof plan, or I do this, and you guys get away. I kick the bucket, but I prefer it this way. The needs of the many precede that of the few."

"You're going to need someone to-" Lupin began. Retis cut him off halfway.

"You are not staying. I'm not getting both of us killed for this. You're a hunter, Lupin, you know when to give up, all that shit. With me, it's honour, geddit? I'm not going to fuckin' let you get yourself killed on top of this, so I'm doing what I need to, to make sure people survive. Take it and fucking run. _Don't_ try and talk me out of this, any of you. We did this because we want people to come out of this alive, and I intend to make sure they do. Telera, you take the shots and run, I'm not letting you get caught in the crossfire."

_"You're set on this?"_ she asked, fingers flicking. He nodded confirmation. _"Then if we're going to do this, we're doing it right."_

"Get started, the rest of you." Retis shooed them away.

"We're not-"

"Go." It was said with such a finality, such grave sincerity and pain that Fiona couldn't find it in herself to disagree. Instead she stumbled forward and embraced him, tear forming as it finally sunk in that he wasn't coming back. "Now get out of here, fox, there's someone waiting for you back home and he wants to make sure you come back. Get out of here, all of you. They're going to see the cremation from back at the city, so don't kill yourself over missing it." he slapped her on the arm and pushed her away, spinning dramatically back to the spot at the edge of the forest. A brief pat on Telera's shoulder signalled her to begin, and he glanced back to watch the others disappear. "Take the shots, and go, got it?" he murmured in the tigress' ear. She nodded again.

_-Crack, thup-_

He hadn't expected to live forever.

_-Crack, thup-_

To die for those you loved, for those you wanted to save…there was no better way.

_Crack, thup-_

Goin' out with a fuckin' bang.

As the sound of the last shot faded, he gave one last shrug of indifference, and exploded from the treeline, scimitars sliding from sheathes in a last charge. He was going to fucking die, but he was going to make sure _he would never be forgotten._

* * *

Ten minutes.

Ten minutes until she heard, no, _felt_ it, the explosion as it rippled, pulsed through the forests causing the trees to shake and lean as a bright cloud mushroomed into the sky. The shockwave itself threw the surviving party members to the ground – Telera included, having caught up in the interim – and for a moment, they didn't want to move. He had been dead the moment he made the decision, but now…now it was real, now there was no going back, no last words, he was _gone_. It was over, or it felt like it.

Fiona's comm beeped, waking her from the sadness. "Hey? What the hell happened?"

"T-Tails?" she managed to splutter in reply after a few moments.

"Yea. Fuck…I saw the explosion, what did you _do?"_

"We didn't…Retis…fucking _arse…"_

"_What? What did he do?"_" He snapped.

_"Fucking_…killed himself…wouldn't let us tell him no…"

_"What?_ Is everyone else alright?"

"Yea…fucking hell…he wouldn't…" her words dissolved into sobs and swears.

"Damn…get the others back, things are about to play out here. Antoine finished regrouping, and the enemy force is marching through the city. I'm finishing this now."

* * *

The walls were silent – completely. Everything was ready, no-one had anything left to say. Whatever was happening, would play out today, as the sun crested the horizon, illuminating the scene with a warming glow. The sun, the only thing that seemed out of touch with what was going on.  
Soldiers waited in anticipation, some with hands on weapons or even on triggers, eyes scanning the city for the first signs of approach. It was a pointless gesture; Tails had spoken with Antoine, things had been decided – no-one would fire a shot, not until they were told, at least. No first-contact, no sneak attacks, nothing of the sort. They knew he had something planned, and you didn't gainsay Tails, not if you wanted to keep your life.  
Tails was probably the quietest – if that was possible – of them all. His mood and thoughts were grim, both on what he had been swilling around in his head, and the news…one of them would have died eventually. It was the reality of war, but still, it hit hard. Alicia and Retis in the same day…they were going to pay for this.

He began to see the vanguard, little bits of life flickering through the building landscape in his mind's eye, chaos sense watching the normal move around, checking for traps. He had to admire their planning, if only for a moment. They hadn't encountered any hostiles yet, but they checked anyway…probably to avoid another incident, like at the gates. Then they appeared.

They came from several avenues at once actually – you couldn't approach the palace directly as a security measure – and assembled in organised lines in the wide lane leading up to it, the tanks bringing up the rear. Where was it…he waited, watched for signs.

_There._

It was what he'd been afraid of…he had an entire arsenal, they would choose the biggest _fuck off_ weapon they could. They had stolen an Arachnid plasma platform. Heavily armed and armoured, it was one of the best he made – it would crack the gates in one shot, but it couldn't fire while moving…they would wait until everyone was steady before firing. He raised one hand, open, and watched the scene unfold before him.  
Ranks, squads, platoons, played to the tune of someone…Tails' eyes narrowed, scouring the crowd…there, the eyes, the stance, the badges…fuckin' general was boy-scout…he was making a statement.

Tails moved inward for a moment, his mind going through channels, directing chaos energy to his voice, and then he spoke. "Don't keep me waiting! I haven't got all day!" his voice came out as a roar that echoed through the square, and soldiers down below glanced his way, before more bellowed commands, distant and from their general, reached them and they went back to the task of trying to look suitably cool. Despite the warning, it took another ten minutes for the warriors to assemble, the general and his retinue at the front, the Arachnid splayed out on a raised platform at the back of the army. Tails took a moment to glance to either side as the final details down below completed.

"The Arachnid, that's the target." He explained to the pair of soldiers either side of them, and they passed it down the line to weapon crews. They didn't reply to his word, just waited.

"We are doing this-" the voice, powerful enough, came from a megaphone down below, and Tails spoke right through it.

"You're in charge?" he shouted, voice amplified by chaos energy, "Good, I don't want to repeat this. You have fucking _pissed me off_. That was a very, very big mistake. All your men, all of you, I'm giving you this chance to stand down. Discard this one chance, and you will not leave this square alive." Silence from below.

He closed his hand.

Twelve rockets slashed silently from launchers, followed moments later by a handful of plasma blasts, streaking over the heads of the soldiers below. The Arachnid, their biggest ploy, exploded as the heaviest weapons they could find came to bear on the armoured gun, and the shockwave from the destruction of the massive construct flattened the back ranks and caused those further forward to stumble on their feet.

"Still feel so sure?" he bellowed, "You killed the queen and you killed my teammate, so well done, you all-but signed your own death wish. Before you ask, no, it's not why I brought all these soldiers up here. They're _insurance._" he lowered his hand, placing both on the parapet. "You're going to die and I'm not going to know your name, but Geoffrey…" his eyes wandered to the skunk next to the general, "You made your mistake, and there isn't going to be a trial. The king is a stickler for that tradition, maybe he would do it. You'd be found guilty anyway, but I can't be bothered with it. You die here today, and you will regret what you have done."

The time for words was over. He pushed off, over the parapet and dropped like a stone towards the ground, chaos energy flaring and rippling across his arms and through his gloveless hands. The fall lasted a few seconds, and he struck the ground like a thunderbolt.

Tails landed on one knee, his fist striking the ground and directing his energy and anger downwards into the ground. The ground cracked and ruptured on impact, groaning in protest as the sound bounced and rebounded through the ears of the soldiers, as weapons went to hands and magazines clicked home. It was the first clue that something wasn't ordinary – a fall like that didn't do that sort of damage, and Tails rose, smoking but unharmed, to face the small army. His hands snapped open again, chaos spears crackling alight, Tails taking his steps out of the crater, slow, unhurried, towards the general. The falcon, to his credit, held his ground, and the pistol he held barked and bucked, then man emptying the clip into Tails, watching in silent dismay as each shot disintegrated against the ring-shield Tails had erected, but not stated. The fox stopped, ten paces from Turk, and closed his hands sadly, the chaos spears dimming and sinking back into the ether.

"You made the mistake…don't worry, some of your men might live if they put their guns down, but you won't. You and Geoff and all your little cohorts won't be going anywhere." He left it at than, and watched them for a couple of seconds more with a stare that crumbled Geoffrey's bones. Then he moved.

That's all the skunk could see, that Tails moved – it happened so fast, too fast for him to even try to see – he passed through Turk, there was a swiping motion and Tails solidified again on the other side and Turk stumbled and fell, blood pouring from an open wound in his throat. He saw the lifeless man crumple onto the pavement, before a hand clamped around his throat and lifted him from the ground. This was it. He hadn't thought it would come so fast, but…

Tails struck him cleanly across the face with a closed fist. "You're not going to hell, Geoff, there isn't going to be anything left of you." He drew back his hand again and opened it, and in that moment the skunk stared into oblivion. Tails hadn't bothered with a chaos attack, or a ring attack, Geoffrey stared into a pulsing miasma of energy, some mash-up combination of raw chaos and ring energy, just _power._

Of course, he only had a moment to see it, a moment before Tails clamped his hand over Geoff's face and released the pent up power into the man, and watched him come apart like smoke in his hands, and as the source of the problem faded into smoke, he looked at the army – the front ranks anyway, with a questioning expression that said, _it's your choice, make it now._

He watched, and lowered his hands, flicking on the comm with a tired expression. "You saw it happen, Ant, get down and do what you want. I'm done here."

* * *

**A/N: This marks the end of the first Arc of Violet Era. The second arc will be posted as a second story, primarily because if I were to string the entire Violet Era series together it would be far too long to contain in one story. There are a total of ten arcs that will be written, and each will be a separate story but will also be able to follow on from the previous one.**


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